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Law Library Blog (March 2023): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

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"Sorry" Is Never Enough: How State Apology Laws Fail To Reduce Medical Malpractice Liability Risk, W. Kip Viscusi, Benjamin J. Mcmichael, R. Lawrence Van Horn

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Based on case studies indicating that apologies from physicians to patients can promote healing, understanding, and dispute resolution, 38 states have sought to reduce litigation and medical malpractice liability by enacting apology laws. Apology laws facilitate apologies by making them inadmissible in subsequent malpractice trials.

The underlying assumption regarding the potential efficacy of these laws is that, after receiving an apology, patients will be less likely to pursue a malpractice claim and will be more likely to settle those claims that are filed. However, once a patient has been made aware that the physician has committed a medical error, the …

Voluntarily Stopping Eating And Drinking: A Legal Treatment Option At The End Of Life, Thaddeus Mason Pope

Faculty Scholarship

Despite the growing sophistication of palliative medicine, many individuals continue to suffer at the end of life. It is well settled that patients, suffering or not, have the right to refuse life-sustaining medical treatment (such as dialysis or a ventilator) through contemporaneous instructions, through an advance directive, or through a substitute decision maker. But many ill patients, including a large and growing population with advanced dementia who are not dependent upon life-sustaining medical treatment, do not have this option. They have the same rights, but there is simply no life-sustaining medical treatment to refuse.

Nevertheless, these patients have another right, …

Health Courts?, Philip G. Peters Jr.

Faculty Publications

This article undertakes the first detailed critique of the proposal from Common Good and the Harvard School of Public Health to replace medical malpractice jury trials with adjudication before specialized health courts. Professor Peters concludes that the modest benefits likely to be produced by the current health court proposal are matched by the risks of bias and overreaching that these courts would also present. Missing from the plan is the doctrinal change mostly likely to improve patient safety - hospital enterprise liability. Without enterprise liability, the health court proposal is unlikely to achieve its patient safety goals and, as a …

An Empirical Assessment Of Early Offer Reform For Medical Malpractice, W. Kip Viscusi, Wesley A. Magat, Joel Huber

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The early offer reform proposal for medical malpractice provides an option for claimants to receive prompt payment of all their net economic losses and reasonable attorney fees. Using a large sample of closed individual medical malpractice claims from Texas supplemented by data from Florida, this article provides an empirical assessment of the consequences of the early offer reform. Noneconomic damages make up about two-thirds of paid claim amounts. The minimum payment amount for serious injuries will affect the magnitude of insurer savings and claimant compensation. Payments to claimants will be expedited by 2 years by the early offer reform, and …

"It's Not About The Money!": A Theory On Misconceptions Of Plaintiffs' Litigation Aims, Tamara Relis

Scholarly Works

This Article examines from a new angle a long-standing debate on a central question of the legal system: why plaintiffs sue and what they seek from litigation. Legal research has documented various extra-legal aims or non-economic agendas of plaintiffs who commence legal proceedings for various case-types. However, current debates have failed to address this issue in depth from the perspectives of plaintiffs themselves, subsequent to lawyers conditioning them on legal system realities and translating their disputes into legally cognizable compartments. Nor have understandings of plaintiffs' aims been examined from the perspectives of defense lawyers. These are significant gaps in the …

Maternity Leave Under The Fmla: An Analysis Of The Litigation Experience , Rafael Gely, Timothy D. Chandler

Faculty Publications

We begin with a brief description of trends in female labor force participation and the presence of dual-earner households in the U.S. labor market, conditions which likely led to the need for family and medical leave legislation. We then review various practices that business and government organizations have implemented to balance work and family conflicts, as well as related features of the FMLA, particularly those pertaining to childbirth and adoption. With this background in place, we introduce a framework for examining FMLA litigation. We then review cases litigated in federal court under the FMLA involving requests for family leave due …

Time To Enter A "Do Not Resuscitate" Order On The National Resident Matching Program's Chart, Gregory Dolin

All Faculty Scholarship

This article focuses on the NRMP system and argues that the process is neither efficient nor pro-competitive. This article argues that Congress erred in bestowing an antitrust exemption on the NRMP and the participating institutions.

This article suggests that although the system may have been necessary to check the problem of early recruiting that was pervasive in the 1950s (similar to the one that plagued the federal judiciary until just two years ago), the system has outlived its usefulness. Part II will explain the Match's history and function and will discuss how the system makes participation in the Match inevitable …

Empirical Evidence And Malpractice Litigation, Philip G. Peters Jr.

Faculty Publications

Critics of medical malpractice litigation believe that expert testimony is often anecdotal and biased. To remedy this problem, several have recently suggested that attorneys should provide and courts should seek reliable empirical evidence of actual clinical norms. Their suggestion should be welcomed. If our expectations are realistic and the design pitfalls are avoided, greater use of use of empirical research will improve the fairness of malpractice adjudication. At least in theory, it could be useful in both the "easy" cases (where it reveals that a consensus standard of care exists) and also some of the harder cases (where clinical practices …

Symposium: Regulatory And Liability Considerations, Michael S. Baram, Ellen Flannery, Patricia Davis, Gary Marchant

Faculty Scholarship

You can tell from remarks by prior speakers that regulatory approvals and liability prevention are of critical importance to progress in biomaterials. Gene therapy trials and the tragic outcomes of some of those trials have raised the specter of government suspension of clinical studies, termination of funding, and potential liability for personal injury under malpractice or products liability doctrines. Regulatory requirements and the terms of research grants and contracts have to be very carefully addressed by organizations testing, developing, making, selling and using biomaterials, biotechnology, and medical devices. However, many regulatory requirements are incomplete, ambiguous and confusing because the agencies …