Litigation Commons^™

What History Can Tell Us About The Future Of Insurance And Litigation After Covid-19, Kenneth S. Abraham, Tom Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article, written for the annual Clifford Symposium on Tort Law and Social Policy, chronicles a series of developments in American history that profoundly influenced the course of insurance and insurance law, in order to predict the post-COVID-19 future of these fields. In each instance, there was a direct and decided cause-and-effect relationship between these developments and subsequent change in the world of insurance and insurance law. As important as the influence of COVID-19 is at present and probably will be in the future, in our view the COVID-19 pandemic will not be as significant an influence on insurance and …

Everything’S Bigger In Texas: Except The Medmal Settlements, Tom Baker, Eric Helland, Jonathan Klick

All Faculty Scholarship

Recent work using Texas closed claim data finds that physicians are rarely required to use personal assets in medical malpractice settlements even when plaintiffs secure judgments above the physician's insurance limits. In equilibrium, this should lead physicians to purchase less insurance. Qualitative research on the behavior of plaintiffs suggests that there is a norm under which plaintiffs agree not to pursue personal assets as long as defendants are not grossly underinsured. This norm operates as a soft constraint on physicians. All other things equal, while physicians want to lower their coverage, they do not want to violate the norm and …

Medicare Secondary Payer And Settlement Delay, Eric Helland, Jonathan Klick

All Faculty Scholarship

The Medicare Secondary Payer Act of 1980 and its subsequent amendments require that insurers and self-insured companies report settlements, awards, and judgments that involve a Medicare beneficiary to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The parties then may be required to compensate CMS for its conditional payments. In a simple settlement model, this makes settlement less likely. Also, the reporting delays and uncertainty regarding the size of these conditional payments are likely to further frustrate the settlement process. We provide results, using data from a large insurer, showing that, on average, implementation of the MSP reporting amendments led to …

Federal Securities Fraud Litigation As A Lawmaking Partnership, Jill E. Fisch

All Faculty Scholarship

In its most recent Halliburton II decision, the Supreme Court rejected an effort to overrule its prior decision in Basic Inc. v. Levinson. The Court reasoned that adherence to Basic was warranted by principles of stare decisis that operate with “special force” in the context of statutory interpretation. This Article offers an alternative justification for adhering to Basic—the collaboration between the Court and Congress that has led to the development of the private class action for federal securities fraud. The Article characterizes this collaboration as a lawmaking partnership and argues that such a partnership offers distinctive lawmaking advantages. …

The Political Economy Of Fraud On The Market, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Law, Society, And Medical Malpractice Litigation In Japan, Eric Feldman

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Jackpot Justice And The American Tort System: Thinking Beyond Junk Science, Tom Baker, Herbert M. Kritzer, Neil Vidmar

All Faculty Scholarship

In 2007 the Pacific Research Institute released a report, Jackpot Justice: The True Cost of America's Tort System, that is widely available on the internet. The conclusion of the report is that America's tort system costs $865.37 billion annually, amounting to an "annual price tag, or 'tort tax' for a family of four in terms of costs and foregone benefits" of $9,827. As our report will demonstrate, the conclusions of Jackpot Justice are without scientific merit and present a very misleading picture of the American tort system and its costs.

Research on the tort system's efficiency, its fairness and …

Commentary On Class Settlements Under Attack, Catherine T. Struve

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Greater And Lesser Powers Of Tort Reform: The Primary Jurisdiction Doctrine And State-Law Claims Concerning Fda-Approved Products, Catherine T. Struve

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Medical Malpractice Reform And Physicians In High-Risk Specialties, Jonathan Klick, Thomas Stratmann

All Faculty Scholarship

If medical malpractice reform affects the supply of physicians, the effects will be concentrated in specialties facing high liability exposure. Many doctors are likely to be indifferent regarding reform, because their likelihood of being sued is low. This difference can be exploited to isolate the causal effect of medical malpractice reform on the supply of doctors in high-risk specialties, by using doctors in low-risk specialties as a contemporaneous within-state control group. Using this triple-differences design to control for unobserved effects that correlate with the passage of medical malpractice reform, we show that only caps on noneconomic damages have a statistically …

Preclusion In Class Action Litigation, Tobias Barrington Wolff

All Faculty Scholarship

"Despite the intense focus that courts and commentators have trained upon class litigation for the last twenty-five years, a central feature of the class-action lawsuit has received no sustained attention: the preclusive effect that a judgment in a class action should have upon the other, non-class claims of absentees. The omission is a serious one. If claim and issue preclusion were to operate in their normal mode when a claim is certified for class treatment, absentees would sometimes face a serious threat of having their high-value individual claims compromised. Such a threat, in turn, can create ex ante conflicts of …

Liability Insurance As Tort Regulation: Six Ways That Liability Insurance Shapes Tort Law In Action, Tom Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

Leaving aside difficult to interpret doctrinal developments, such as the abrogation of traditional immunities, liability insurance has at least the following six impacts on tort law in action. First, for claims against all but the wealthiest individuals and organizations, liability insurance is a de facto element of tort liability. Second, liability insurance limits are a de facto cap on tort damages. Third, tort claims are shaped to match the available liability insurance, with the result that liability insurance policy exclusions become de facto limits on tort liability. Fourth, liability insurance makes lawsuits against ordinary individuals and small organizations into repeat …

The Fda And The Tort System: Postmarketing Surveillance, Compensation, And The Role Of Litigation, Catherine T. Struve

All Faculty Scholarship

The dispute over FDA regulatory preemption is familiar: Preemption advocates assert that products liability suits stifle innovation, and proponents of tort liability counter that the FDA fails adequately to protect the public and that persons injured by defective products deserve compensation. The FDA's premarket approval process cannot detect all potential safety problems with a new drug; postmarketing surveillance is essential, and the FDA's efforts in that regard fall short. Advocates of preemption will find it difficult to establish that FDA regulation should entirely displace the tort system. This article examines whether a case could be made for an intermediate approach …

Two Observations On Holocaust Claims, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Foreword: Causes And Limits Of Pessimism, Stephen B. Burbank

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Futures Problem, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

Perhaps the most difficult problem in addressing mass torts is that of future claimants. "Futures" are those who do not now have claims, because injury has not been sufficiently manifested, but who may well have claims in the future. The Supreme Court's decisions in Amchem and Ortiz appear to have foredoomed any procedural mechanism by which to resolve future claims. This, in turn, will leave defendants in mass tort cases with greatly reduced incentives to participate in mass settlement. That implication makes the possibility of reforms in substantive law perhaps more attractive. In addition, these decisions invite further questions about …

Introduction, Anthony J. Scirica

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Dashing Consumer Hopes: Strict Products Liability And The Demise Of The Consumer Expectations Test, Rebecca Korzec

All Faculty Scholarship

The threshold issue in American products liability litigation is whether the product was defective at the time it left the manufacturer's control. Traditionally, courts and scholars define “defect” in three functional categories: manufacturing defects, design defects and marketing defects. American products liability doctrine employs two major tests to determine whether a "defect” exists: the seller-oriented risk-utility test and the buyer-oriented consumer expectations test. The Draft of the Restatement Third of Torts: Products Liability, like some American jurisdictions, rejects the “consumer expectations” test as an independent standard in defective warning and design cases. Ironically, this limitation of the use of the …

The Qualified Immunity Doctrine In The Supreme Court: Judicial Activism And The Restriction Of Constitutional Rights, David Rudovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Punitive Damages: Punishment Of An Insured Defendant?, Carroway V. Johnson, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

The plaintiff sued the defendant for injuries sustained in an automobile collision and was awarded a judgment in the amount of $5,000 actual damages and $1,500 punitive damages. The defendant's insurance company had refused to defend her in that action or to pay the judgment obtained, relying upon an employee exclusion clause in the policy. The plaintiff thereupon sued the defendant on the judgment, this time joining the insurer as a co-defendant, and won a verdict to recover against the insurer the aforesaid amount. The insurance company appealed, questioning its liability for punitive damages.