Medical Jurisprudence Commons^™

Torts And Innovation, Alex Stein, Gideon Parchomovsky

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Medical Malpractice Law, Kathleen M. Mccauley, William F. Demarest Iii

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Balco, The Steroids Scandal, And What The Already Fragile Secrecy Of Federal Grand Juries Means To The Debate Over A Potential Federal Media Shield Law, Peter Meyer

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Dances With Elephants: Administrative Resolution Of Medical Injury Claims By Medicare Beneficiaries, Eleanor D. Kinney, William M. Sage

Faculty Scholarship

In our judgment, Hoffmann and Rowthorn's research clearly demonstrates that the QIO-based complaint review process does not provide genuine relief to beneficiaries. People who complain typically want an explanation of their bad experience, compensation for harm they may have suffered, and assurance that future experiences will be better for themselves and for others. Medicare beneficiaries, however, receive minimal information about the resolution of their complaints and no substantive relief whatsoever.

As Hoffmann and Rowthorn point out, several reform proposals are now before Congress, including moving the beneficiary complaint function from QIOs to new "Medicare Provider Review Organizations." It is not …

Calling It A Leg Doesn't Make It A Leg: Doctors, Lawyers And Tort Reform, Ellen Wertheimer

Working Paper Series

It has long been a truism that doctors hate lawyers. This article explores some of the reasons for this phenomenon, as well as some areas for reform that might help to promote a better relationship between the professions.

The Patent Lottery: Exploiting Behavioral Economics For The Common Good, Dennis D. Crouch

Faculty Publications

Lotteries are immensely popular. Players are willing to give the organizer a large monetary cut of every ticket purchase in return for a chance at a jackpot. In some ways, our current patent system operates as a lottery as well. Most patents are relatively worthless, while a few are highly valuable. Reaching the major payout of a highly valuable patent takes perseverance in the face of tremendous uncertainty. Like lottery players, small entrepreneurial companies and individuals have shows signs of bounded rationality. In particular, what I call the patent lottery effect is associated with the phenomena of potential innovators overweighting …

Amicus Brief, Lebron V. Gottlieb Memorial Hospital, Neil Vidmar, Tom Baker, Ralph L. Brill, Martha Chamallas, Stephen Daniels, Thomas A. Eaton, Theodore Eisenberg, Neal R. Feigenson, Lucinda M. Finley, Marc Galanter, Valerie P. Hans, Michael Heise, Edward J. Kionka, Thomas H. Koenig, Herbert M. Kritzer, David I. Levine, Nancy S. Marder, Joanne Martin, Frank M. Mcclellan, Deborah Jones Merritt, Philip G. Peters, Jr., James T. Richardson, Charles Silver, Richard W. Wright

Scholarly Works

Illinois Public Act 82-280, § 2-1706.5, as amended by P.A. 94-677, § 330 (eff. Aug. 25, 2005), and as codified as 735 ILCS 5/2-1706.5(a), imposes a $500,000 “cap” on the noneconomic damages that may be awarded in a medical malpractice suit against a physician or other health care professional, and a $1 million “cap” on the noneconomic damages that may be awarded against a hospital, its affiliates, or their employees.

This brief will address two of the questions presented for review by the parties:

1. Does the cap violate the Illinois Constitution’s prohibition on “special legislation,” Art. IV, § 3, …

Patents And Traditional Medicine: Digital Capture, Creative Legal Interventions And The Dialectics Of Knowledge Transformation, Chidi Oguamanam

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This article examines the debate over the exclusion of indigenous or local knowledge forms from the global intellectual property system, and some of the current attempts to solve this problem. Using the lens of cultural cosmopolitanism, the article highlights important trends in the dialectics of developing countries' engagement with intellectual property and other collateral knowledge protection systems. The three sites at which this significant development is unfolding are: (1) the digitization of traditional medicinal knowledge through India's traditional knowledge digital library (TKDL) project; (2) a recent attempt at incorporating innovations in Chinese Herbal Medicine (CHM) in Taiwanese patent law; and …

Research With Decisionally Incapacitated Human Subjects: An Argument For A Systemic Approach To Risk-Benefit Assessment, Carl H. Coleman

Indiana Law Journal

The amount of medical research with persons who lack decision-making capacity is rapidly increasing, but in most states it takes place without clear legal authority. In addition to creating significant liability risks for researchers and persons who provide consent on behalf of incapacitated subjects, the lack of explicit legal standards means that few, if any, safeguards exist to protect incapacitated persons' rights and welfare. Previous efforts to close the gap between clinical reality and legal requirements have failed in part because they have not provided a coherent or persuasive ethical justification for permitting this research. This Article seeks to fill …

The Human Factor: Globalizing Ethical Standards In Drug Trials Through Market Exclusion, Fazal Khan

Scholarly Works

Given the tremendous financial reward that a blockbuster therapy might generate, there are strong incentives to move drug research and development to developing countries, which have minimal ethical guidelines and little transparency. The danger in this race for the prize--or for the bottom--is the exploitation of subaltern populations that have little legal recourse to hold drug companies accountable for the harm that those populations suffer as a result of unethical clinical trials. In other words, the drug industry is acutely aware that there is a minimal threat of costly civil suits and criminal sanctions for their ethical violations in impoverished …

Jesting Pilate, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

I have two goals this month. First, to examine a case that's in the news. Second, to counsel skepticism in reading news accounts of cases. Recently, I was talking with an admirable scholar. He said that transplant surgeons sometimes kill potential donors to obtain their organs efficiently. He added, "This isn't just an urban legend - there's a real case in California." A little research turned up California v. Roozrokh. A little Googling found stories from several reputable news sources. Their headlines indeed intimated that a transplant surgeon had tried to kill a patient to get transplantable organs. CNN.com: …

Compliance With Advance Directives: Wrongful Living And Tort Law Incentives, Holly Fernandez Lynch, Michele Mathes, Nadia N. Sawicki

All Faculty Scholarship

Modern ethical and legal norms generally require that deference be accorded to patients' decisions regarding treatment, including decisions to refuse life-sustaining care, even when patients no longer have the capacity to communicate those decisions to their physicians. Advance directives were developed as a means by which a patient's autonomy regarding medical care might survive such incapacity. Unfortunately, preserving patient autonomy at the end of life has been no simple task. First, it has been difficult to persuade patients to prepare for incapacity by making their wishes known. Second, even when they have done so, there is a distinct possibility that …

"I Will Not Divulge": How To Resolve The "Mass Of Legal Confusion" Surrounding The Physician-Patient Relationship In West Virginia, Mary Claire Johnson

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Blurring The Boundary Lines Between Amateur And Professional Sports, Kenneth D. Ferguson

Faculty Works

The NCAA expends substantial resources to insure that the distinction between amateur and professional sports is maintained in collegiate athletics. Preserving the boundary lines between amateur and professional sports is more than an attempt to ensure philosophical purity or a nostalgic quest for historic preservation. The boundaries between amateur and professional sports are maintained by legal doctrines in several areas.

Application of tort law to coaches' liability for conduct leading to injuries to athletes reflects and preserves the boundary lines between professional and amateur sports. Although the implied assumption of risk doctrine should preserve that distinction, some courts have applied …

Resuscitating Hospital Enterprise Liability, Philip G. Peters Jr.

Faculty Publications

No tort reform has more potential to improve the quality of medical care and to reduce the frequency of patient injuries than exclusive hospital enterprise liability. Hospital enterprise liability would make hospitals liable for all patient injuries occurring in the hospital that are the product of provider negligence, regardless of the independent contractor status of the providers. In its "exclusive" form, enterprise liability would also eliminate the personal liability of individual physicians and nurses. Exclusive hospital enterprise liability has the potential to revive the dormant deterrent power of tort law. The reasons are simple. Unlike individual physicians, hospitals are experience-rated …

Abortion, Persuasion, And Emotion: Implications Of Social Science Research On Emotions For Reading Casey, Jeremy A. Blumenthal

Washington Law Review

Although abortion jurisprudence under Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey condones State efforts to persuade a woman to forego an abortion in favor of childbirth, the opinion’s “truthful and not misleading” language can be read more broadly than it traditionally has. Specifically, even a truthful message may mislead when it inappropriately takes advantage of emotional influence to bias an individual’s decision away from the decision that would be made in a non-emotional, fully informed state. Drawing on empirical research in the social sciences, I suggest that the sort of emotional information that many states now provide in their “informed …

Better Never Than Late, But Why?: The Contradictory Relationship Between Law And Abortion, Shelley A. M. Gavigan

Articles & Book Chapters

"I am honoured to have been invited to be a panelist in such distinguished company at this important event. I am particularly attracted to the invitation in the title of the Symposium to reflect upon the 1988 decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Morgentaler. In reflecting upon the case, its significance and legacy, I want to talk about the importance of history, the contradictory nature of law and the enduring importance of ideology."

Health Law’S Coherence Anxiety, Theodore Ruger

All Faculty Scholarship

Academic health law is often said to suffer from a "law of the horse" problem, or, more particularly, to lack various dimensions of theoretical coherence. In conventional legal academic discourse, the "coherence" ideal prioritizes a cluster of attributes, all of which health law lacks: sparse conceptual singularity, a reductionist focus on particular legal forms, institutional centralization, and historical determinism and orderly development of a legal field. Health law is a singularly poor fit with this traditional model of field coherence. It is a mishmash of various legal forms, applied by divergent and often colliding institutions, and has developed much more …

Confidentiality: An Expectation In Health Care, Anita L. Allen

All Faculty Scholarship

The practice of confidentiality has continued in an era of increased, voluntary openness about medical information in everyday life. Indeed the number and variety of state and federal laws mandating confidentiality by medical professionals has increased in the last dozen years. Moreover, personal injury suits alleging breach of confidentiality or invasion of privacy, along with suits asserting evidentiary privileges, reflect the reality that expectations of confidentiality of medical records and relationships remain strong.

Asbestos Achievements, Anita Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Equal Liberty: Assisted Reproductive Technology And Reproductive Equality, Radhika Rao

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Tissue Tug-Of-War: A Comparison Of International And U.S. Perspectives On The Regulation Of Human Tissue Banks, Lisa C. Edwards

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Every day in the United States and around the world, patients and research participants at hospitals and doctors' offices give biological samples, whether in the form of surgically removed cancer tissue or a routine blood sample. Many of these patients are entirely unaware that their tissues were not thrown out as hazardous waste, and instead used by scientists for the development of new drugs and therapies. The courts in the United States in Moore v. Regents of the University of California, Greenberg v. Miami Children's Hospital Research Institute, and most recently Washington University v. Catalona have determined that a patient …

When Disability Isn't "Just Right": The Entrenchment Of The Medical Model Of Disability And The Goldilocks Dilemma, Bradley A. Areheart

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Not For The Faint Of Heart: Does A Hospital Owe A Duty To Warn A Squeamish Visitor?, 41 J. Marshall L. Rev. 473 (2008), Marc D. Ginsberg, Tricia E. Mcvicker

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Recognizing Our Dangerous Gifts: Applying The Social Model To Individuals With Mental Illness, Rachel Anderson-Watts

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Our society and laws allow a space for a multitude of identities and forms of expression. Many kinds of differences are legally protected in various ways, such as differences in race, religion, and gender. Sometimes protection takes the form of requiring social institutions to adapt to the unique needs of certain individuals or groups. Rights for disabled individuals, as exemplified by the Americans with Disabilities Act, rest on the principle that impairment disables because the world is structured around an incompatible model of human ability; not because of a fundamental deficit within the individual. This conception, termed the social model …

Assessing The Market For Human Reproductive Tissue Alienability: Why Can We Sell Our Eggs But Not Our Livers?, Brenda Reddix-Smalls

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Currently, an unregulated marketplace for assisted reproductive technology exists in the United States. For some people suffering from infertility, the ability to purchase human reproductive tissue, eggs, and sperm yields a maximum benefit when examined in a market context. Buyers, sellers, supply and demand, and technological advances all operate in a robust marketplace to provide the infertile with a supply of human eggs for reproduction with minimum state and federal regulatory control. Conversely, the buying and selling of all other human organs and tissues is prohibited in the United States by several federal statutes. The National Organ Transplant Act (NOTA) …

Can Glucksberg Survive Lawrence? Another Look At The End Of Life And Personal Autonomy, Yale Kamisar

Articles

In Washington v. Glucksberg, the Court declined to find a right to physician-assisted suicide ("PAS") in the Constitution. Not a single Justice dissented. One would expect such a ruling to be quite secure. But Lawrence v. Texas, holding that a state cannot make consensual homosexual conduct a crime, is not easy to reconcile with Glucksberg. Lawrence certainly takes a much more expansive view of substantive due process than did Glucksberg. It is conceivable that the five Justices who made up the Lawrence majority-all of whom still sit on the Court-might overrule Glucksberg. For various reasons, …

Incidental Findings: A Common Law Approach, Stacey A. Tovino

Scholarly Works

Federal regulations governing human subjects research do not address key questions raised by incidental neuroimaging findings, including the scope of a researcher’s disclosure with respect to the possibility of incidental findings and the question whether a researcher has an affirmative legal duty to seek, detect, and report incidental findings. The scope of researcher duties may, however, be mapped with reference to common law doctrine, including fiduciary, tort, contract, and bailment theories of liability.

Neuroimaging Research Into Disorders Of Consciousness: Moral Imperative Or Ethical And Legal Failure?, Stacey A. Tovino

Scholarly Works

This article explores the ethical and legal implications of enrolling individuals with disorders of consciousness (DOC) in neuroimaging research studies. Many scientists have strongly emphasized the need for additional neuroimaging research into DOC, characterizing the conduct of such studies as morally imperative. On the other hand, institutional review boards charged with approving research protocols, scientific journals deciding whether to publish study results, and federal agencies that disburse grant money have limited the conduct, publication, and funding of consciousness investigations based on ethical and legal concerns. Following a detailed examination of the risks and benefits of neuroimaging research involving individuals with …

The Impact Of Neuroscience On Health Law, Stacey A. Tovino

Scholarly Works

Advances in neuroscience have implications for criminal law as well as civil and regulatory law, including health, disability, and benefit law. The role of the behavioral and brain sciences in health insurance claims, the mental health parity debate, and disability proceedings is examined.