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Full-Text Articles in Law

Directors' Duty Of Care To Monitor Information Systems In Hmos: Some Lessons From The Oxford Health Plan, Mary E. O'Byrne Jan 1999

Directors' Duty Of Care To Monitor Information Systems In Hmos: Some Lessons From The Oxford Health Plan, Mary E. O'Byrne

Journal of Law and Health

Given this scale of investment, the centrality of information systems to the success of an HMO, the obligation of regulatory compliance, plus the attention now focused on the year 2000 "millenium bug" problem, information systems are clearly a major area of concern and oversight by corporate directors. This paper analyzes the role of information systems in HMOs and the nature of the HMO directors' duty of care in monitoring the integrity of the information systems to determine when directors may be held personally liable for losses suffered by the corporation when the systems collapse. Section I addresses in general the …


A Proposal To Recognize A Legal Obligation On Physicians To Provide Adequate Medication To Alleviate Pain, Tonya Eippert Jan 1998

A Proposal To Recognize A Legal Obligation On Physicians To Provide Adequate Medication To Alleviate Pain, Tonya Eippert

Journal of Law and Health

This note seeks to show how the current practice among medical practitioners in the United States, by treating pain retroactively after it begins, is inadequate. Administering narcotics to patients on an "as needed" basis unnecessarily prolongs pain and suffering. A more effective approach, which is advocated by the Agency for Health Care Policy & Research (AHCPR), is to treat pain preventatively rather than retroactively. The myth that pain medication is addictive, and that physicians should therefore prescribe as little pain medication as possible, is just that, a myth. Patients are suffering pain in today's hospitals and at home unnecessarily. Given …


Is Law The Prescription That Can Cure Medicine?, Samuel Gorovitz Jan 1996

Is Law The Prescription That Can Cure Medicine?, Samuel Gorovitz

Journal of Law and Health

Now medical care has been transformed. We recognize that the human organism is a complex interaction of many different systems-respiratory, circulatory, neurological, digestive, and so on. Some of them can fail and create both problems and opportunities we did not formerly have. One of the opportunities we now have is that we can keep people alive who in an earlier era would not have survived. And one of the problems we now have is also that we can keep people alive who in an earlier era would not have survived. Some of them are kept alive with such diminished capacity …


Therapists' Liability To The Falsely Accused For Inducing Illusory Memories Of Childhood Sexual Abuse - Current Remedies And A Proposed Statute, Joel Jay Finer Jan 1996

Therapists' Liability To The Falsely Accused For Inducing Illusory Memories Of Childhood Sexual Abuse - Current Remedies And A Proposed Statute, Joel Jay Finer

Journal of Law and Health

While sexual abuse of children has always been a real and horrific phenomenon (a fact unrecognized until relatively recently), the issue this Article will explore is whether, and under what circumstances, a person wrongly accused has, or should have, one or more causes of action against a therapist for culpably inducing the pseudomemory. To refine and make more rational legal actions by persons falsely accused of childhood sexual molestation (arguably justified under existing legal doctrine), this Article will propose specific legislation authorizing a lawsuit under codified circumstances and conditions.


Government Created Medical Practice Guidelines: The Opening Of Pandora's Box, William R. Trail, Brad A. Allen Jan 1996

Government Created Medical Practice Guidelines: The Opening Of Pandora's Box, William R. Trail, Brad A. Allen

Journal of Law and Health

This article will discuss the background and creation of medical practice guidelines in part II. Next, we will define and discuss in Part III the two primary types of medical practice guidelines: privately created guidelines and government created guidelines. In Part IV, we will compare and contract the current medical practice guidelines programs in operation. Finally, we will recommend in section V that a medical practice guidelines program offering an affirmative defense to complying physicians should be implemented on the state level.


Ridicule Or Recourse: Parents Falsely Accused Of Past Sexual Abuse Fight Back , Jeffrey M. Whitesell Jan 1996

Ridicule Or Recourse: Parents Falsely Accused Of Past Sexual Abuse Fight Back , Jeffrey M. Whitesell

Journal of Law and Health

This Note argues that wrongly accused parents should be granted standing by the courts to bring suit against therapists who negligently suggest that their children are victims of sexual abuse. The first section will analyze the validity of recovered memories obtained through the use of various suggestive techniques. The second section will explore the various causes of action that courts are considering actionable by innocent third parties against the therapists who implant false memories. The causes of action that will be analyzed are malpractice, negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, defamation, loss of companionship and society, and breach of contract. …


Doctors, Nurses And Superseding Cause: The Demise Of The Last In Time Defense, Charles Lattanzi Jan 1995

Doctors, Nurses And Superseding Cause: The Demise Of The Last In Time Defense, Charles Lattanzi

Journal of Law and Health

The question which naturally arises is whether the determination of superseding cause in this context is a question for the jury. Ohio case law has long held, as a matter of law, that the aggravation of an injury by the subsequent malpractice of a physician never breaks the chain of causation. Assuming that the original tortfeaser was negligent and that his actions caused the original injury, the only question left for the jury is whether the plaintiff herself exercised reasonable care in seeking treatment by a qualified physician. This rule was affirmed and given its common appellation, "the subsequent tortfeasor …


Clark V. Southview Hospital: Ohio Follows The Nationwide Trend Of Using Agency By Estoppel To Impose Strict Liability On Hospitals , Colleen Moran Jan 1995

Clark V. Southview Hospital: Ohio Follows The Nationwide Trend Of Using Agency By Estoppel To Impose Strict Liability On Hospitals , Colleen Moran

Journal of Law and Health

In Clark, the Ohio Supreme Court set forth a test a plaintiff must meet in order to hold a hospital vicariously liable under the doctrine of agency by estoppel. The court based its test on numerous such decisions from jurisdictions across the country. However, the legal soundness of Clark and the decisions on which it relied is questionable, as many of these jurisdictions misapplied the legal doctrines underlying agency by estoppel theory. This article analyzes the legal doctrines on which agency by estoppel is based, how this theory of vicarious liability has evolved in Ohio, and how state courts across …


A New Predicament For Physicians: The Concept Of Medical Futility, The Physician's Obligation To Render Inappropriate Treatment, And The Interplay Of The Medical Standard Of Care, Eric M. Levine Jan 1994

A New Predicament For Physicians: The Concept Of Medical Futility, The Physician's Obligation To Render Inappropriate Treatment, And The Interplay Of The Medical Standard Of Care, Eric M. Levine

Journal of Law and Health

Part II of this article discusses the concept of futility and reviews various proposed approaches to defining "futility". This article then shows how personal value judgments play an integral part in determining futility under virtually all of these approaches. Part II concludes that a decision that treatment is futile should not be based on the individual values of only the patient or physician under the shared decisionmaking model of the physician-patient relationship. Part III tackles the issue whether a physician must offer or continue treatment deemed "medically and ethically inappropriate." Part III first reviews common law doctrines governing the physician-patient …


Potential Toxic Tort Litigation: Will Used Oil Be The Asbestos Of The 21st Century , Ronald P. Tomallo Jr. Jan 1993

Potential Toxic Tort Litigation: Will Used Oil Be The Asbestos Of The 21st Century , Ronald P. Tomallo Jr.

Journal of Law and Health

This paper explores why there has been so little litigation in this area considering both the harm posed by used oils and the high rate of exposure in many occupations. To aid in an analysis, three distinct topics will be addressed. First, basic information establishing the harm caused by prolonged exposure to used lubricating oils will be presented which will aid in understanding the potential liability. Second, existing case law shall be analyzed. Finally, the development of future litigation will be explored. Plaintiffs in these suits will typically be persons exposed to used oil by common machine lubrication applications - …


Educational Malpractice: A Tort En Ventre, Frank D. Aquila Jan 1991

Educational Malpractice: A Tort En Ventre, Frank D. Aquila

Cleveland State Law Review

This article explores the policy reasons which courts have adopted to deny a private cause of action holding educators legally liable for deficiencies in a student's education. The introductory section provides the background on the basic issue of malpractice in education. Section two examines educational malpractice case law focusing first on cases involving negligence in basic academic skill instruction, then looking at negligence in special education. Section three explores the various duty of care arguments while section four discusses three alternate theories for recovery. Section five analyzes the policy reasons for denial of the tort of educational malpractice. New directions …


Educational Malpractice: A Tort En Ventre, Frank D. Aquila Jan 1991

Educational Malpractice: A Tort En Ventre, Frank D. Aquila

Cleveland State Law Review

This article explores the policy reasons which courts have adopted to deny a private cause of action holding educators legally liable for deficiencies in a student's education. The introductory section provides the background on the basic issue of malpractice in education. Section two examines educational malpractice case law focusing first on cases involving negligence in basic academic skill instruction, then looking at negligence in special education. Section three explores the various duty of care arguments while section four discusses three alternate theories for recovery. Section five analyzes the policy reasons for denial of the tort of educational malpractice. New directions …


Who Decides - Community Safety Conventions At The Heart Of Tort Liability, Patrick J. Kelley Jan 1990

Who Decides - Community Safety Conventions At The Heart Of Tort Liability, Patrick J. Kelley

Cleveland State Law Review

What we need is a uniformly accepted theory that explains the tort liability system in terms of its ultimate social function. The reason we don't have one, I will argue, is that our understanding of the tort liability system has been skewed by an earlier, flawed attempt at descriptive theory. Before embarking on a new search for a descriptive theory, we first ought to formulate a search plan, sometimes called, forbiddingly, a "theoretical methodology." Using John Finnis's social science methodology, we can identify the two halves of the focal case of tort liability: intentional battery and negligent infliction of personal …


The Frustaci Septuplets: Miracle Or Malpractice, Susan Ferguson Slabaugh Jan 1987

The Frustaci Septuplets: Miracle Or Malpractice, Susan Ferguson Slabaugh

Journal of Law and Health

The possibility of imposing such liability has tremendous implications not only for the physician and clinic directly involved, but also for other health care practitioners, health care consumers, and the legal profession, as well. This Note will focus on those implications and proposes a solution to the issues raised by this type of litigation.


Is The Attractive Nuisance Doctrine Outmoded, Robert M. Debevec Jan 1956

Is The Attractive Nuisance Doctrine Outmoded, Robert M. Debevec

Cleveland State Law Review

The history of the "attractive nuisance" rule shows that it stemmed from the turntable cases because the courts felt that an owner of a contrivance of this nature was negligent in not keeping it locked when he realized that small children would play on it. From this shaky proposition of law was built the even shakier structure of the "attractive nuisance." There was no longer any question of the owner failing to repair a lock on a turntable, but the mere fact that the instrumentality or appliance was there became enough to find the owner liable towards trespassing children. The …