Law Commons^™

In Texas, Life Is Cheap, Frank Cross, Charles Silver

Vanderbilt Law Review

What is the life of a Texan worth? Some might suggest very little. Payments in thousands of tort cases in which Texans died provide some evidence for this hypothesis. Although Texas has been a focus of much of the national controversy over the costs of tort litigation, payments in death cases have seen relatively little disciplined research. Existing research often misses the primary effect of the system because it focuses on trial outcomes rather than settlement payments. This Article provides some evidence of the actual payments made in Texas in death cases, their determinants, and the implications of those findings …

What Are We Reforming? Tort Theory's Place In Debates Over Malpractice Reform, John C.P. Goldberg

Vanderbilt Law Review

Those who are reforming medical malpractice law, or studying its reform, ought to attend to tort theory. This is not because theory will settle difficult policy debates. But it does enable reformers and scholars to be more aware of how under-appreciated and possibly dubious assumptions or inferences might be skewing their analyses. In this Essay, I aim to make this point with two examples.

My first example concerns under-litigation-the apparent fact that a substantial percentage of persons with injuries plausibly traceable to malpractice never sue their doctors.' Assume this is a real phenomenon. What are we to make of it? …