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Full-Text Articles in Law
Medical Malpractice Mediation: Benefits Gained, Opportunities Lost , Carol B. Liebman
Medical Malpractice Mediation: Benefits Gained, Opportunities Lost , Carol B. Liebman
Law and Contemporary Problems
Liebman reviews two recent studies evaluating the use of interest-based mediation to resolve medical malpractice claims. The first studied cases brought against the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, and the second, Mediating Suits against Hospitals, studied cases brought against private New York City hospitals. How non-participation of physicians in mediations diminishes opportunities to achieve noneconomic goals that plaintiffs desire is analyzed.
Rationalizing Noneconomic Damages: A Health-Utilities Approach, David M. Studdert, Allen Kachalia, Joshua A. Salomon, Michelle M. Mello
Rationalizing Noneconomic Damages: A Health-Utilities Approach, David M. Studdert, Allen Kachalia, Joshua A. Salomon, Michelle M. Mello
Law and Contemporary Problems
Studdert et al examine why making compensation of noneconomic damages in personal-injury litigation more rational and predictable is socially valuable. Noneconomic-damages schedules as an alternative to caps are discussed, several potential approaches to construction of schedules are reviewed, and the use of a health-utilities approach as the most promising model is argued. An empirical analysis that combines health-utilities data created in a previous study with original empirical work is used to demonstrate how key steps in construction of a health-utilities-based schedule for noneconomic damages might proceed.
Most Claims Settle: Implications For Alternative Dispute Resolution From A Profile Of Medical-Malpractice Claims In Florida , Mirya Holman, Neil Vidmar, Paul Lee
Most Claims Settle: Implications For Alternative Dispute Resolution From A Profile Of Medical-Malpractice Claims In Florida , Mirya Holman, Neil Vidmar, Paul Lee
Law and Contemporary Problems
Holman et al draw attention to the frequent and complicated evidentiary problems in medical malpractice claims and the procedural mechanisms provided by statutes, court rules, and case law that are already in place to facilitate claim resolution. While proposed alternative dispute resolution (ADR) procedures might well provide better resolutions to medical malpractice claims, they must take into consideration both the unique characteristics of medical malpractice disputes and existing mechanisms for resolving these disputes. The profile of the settlements of Florida medical-malpractice claims provides a structure with which any proposals for ADR must contend.
Stealing Sunshine, Ronen Perry, Dana Weimann-Saks
Stealing Sunshine, Ronen Perry, Dana Weimann-Saks
Law and Contemporary Problems
This study is the first to examine the efficacy of this tactic, both theoretically and empirically, contributing to the growing literature on the impact of various trial-advocacy techniques on decision-makers' perceptions and trial outcomes. Given the primacy of the work, the authors draw on existing literature on a related courtroom technique commonly known as "stealing thunder," which is -- in a sense -- the mirror image of the tactic under scrutiny.
Indemnification And Advancement Through An Agency Lens, Deborah A. Demott
Indemnification And Advancement Through An Agency Lens, Deborah A. Demott
Law and Contemporary Problems
DeMott discusses the doctrines that define entitlements to indemnification. In the corporate context, indemnification is better grounded, as in the Model Business Corporation Act (MBCA), in the necessity of furnishing corporate directors with appropriate protection against personal risk. To be sure, as the MBCA's official comments implicitly acknowledge, the position of officers, especially senior executive officers, does not fit neatly and exclusively into either an "agent" or a "non-agent" category for indemnification purposes.
What Is Probable Cause, And Why Should We Care?: The Costs, Benefits, And Meaning Of Individualized Suspicion, Andrew E. Taslitz
What Is Probable Cause, And Why Should We Care?: The Costs, Benefits, And Meaning Of Individualized Suspicion, Andrew E. Taslitz
Law and Contemporary Problems
Taslitz defines probable cause as having four components: one quantitative, one qualitative, one temporal, and one moral. He focuses on the last of these components. "Individualized suspicion," the US Supreme Court has suggested, is perhaps the most important of the four components of probable cause. That is a position with which he heartily agree. The other three components each play only a supporting role. But individualized suspicion is the beating heart that gives probable cause its vitality.
Government Dragnets, Christopher Slobogin
Government Dragnets, Christopher Slobogin
Law and Contemporary Problems
Slobogin describes the nature and effects of dragnet actions. They do so primarily through the prism of Supreme Court and lower court cases, but these sections also look at law-enforcement efforts that have yet to lead to litigation and imagine future dragnet efforts as well, with a special emphasis on the role technology can play in motivating dragnets and carrying them out. He then summarizes the Supreme Court's approach to group searches and the most significant alternative proposals for dealing with them.
Can Effective Apology Emerge Through Litigation?, Alphonse A. Gerhardstein
Can Effective Apology Emerge Through Litigation?, Alphonse A. Gerhardstein
Law and Contemporary Problems
Gerhardstein provides a number of examples in which the factors identified by Roger Conner and Patricia Jordan--ripeness, a window of opportunity, and a symbolic act or gesture--came together to facilitate apology by a public leader. But he doesn't think that the window of opportunity needs to be exogenously determined. Rather, advocates can, through litigation and settlement demands, create that window. He believes that apology by public officials can do more to promote healthy civic society than can mere monetary settlement.
Trials And Tribulations: What Happens When Historians Enter The Courtroom, David Rosner
Trials And Tribulations: What Happens When Historians Enter The Courtroom, David Rosner
Law and Contemporary Problems
In recent years, historians have been brought into legal cases in unprecedented numbers. As the courts have tried to adjudicate responsibility for environmental and occupational diseases, history has played an increasingly central role in decisions that affect the cases themselves and in social policy regarding risk. In suits over tobacco-related diseases, asbestosis, radiation, and other toxic substances, more historians of technology and science, social history, and public health are being sought to provide testimony aimed at assessing responsibility for damages that have arisen years--sometimes decades--after exposure. Here, Rosner traces the use of historians as experts in litigation.
Science, Law And The Expert Witness, Joseph Sanders
Science, Law And The Expert Witness, Joseph Sanders
Law and Contemporary Problems
Expert witnessing is a particularly useful place to observe the clash of legal and scientific conventions because it is here that one group of people (scientific experts) who are integrated into one set of conventions are challenged by the expectations of a different set of conventions. Here, Sanders looks at how legal conventions affect the behavior of expert witnesses when they appear in court in both criminal and civil cases. He also reviews differences in scientific and legal conventions as they apply to expert knowledge and discusses two central reasons for these differences: adversarialism and closure.
Jail Strip-Search Cases: Patterns And Participants, Margo Schlanger
Jail Strip-Search Cases: Patterns And Participants, Margo Schlanger
Law and Contemporary Problems
Schlanger talks about jail strip-search cases and its participants. Among the interesting features of these cases is that many different kinds of lawyers work on them. Plaintiffs' lawyers include employees of public-interest organizations; large law firm lawyers, often working pro bono, with a cooperating relationship with such a public-interest organization; lawyers with a private prisoners' rights or police-misconduct practice; and lawyers with a more varied or general class-action practice. This is somewhat unusual; the litigation bar has, by all accounts, grown increasingly specialized over the past several generations.
Revisiting The Legal Link Between Genetics And Crime, Deborah W. Denno
Revisiting The Legal Link Between Genetics And Crime, Deborah W. Denno
Law and Contemporary Problems
In 1994, convicted murderer Stephen Mobley became a cause celebre when he appealed his death sentence before the Georgia Supreme Court in the case of Mobley v. State. Denno describes the potential implications arising from the high-profile case of Stephen Mobley. He sought to introduce a then-cutting-edge theory that violence could be based on a genetic or neurochemical abnormality as mitigating evidence during capital sentencing.
On The Prospect Of “Daubertizing” Judicial Review Of Risk Assessment, Thomas O. Mcgarity
On The Prospect Of “Daubertizing” Judicial Review Of Risk Assessment, Thomas O. Mcgarity
Law and Contemporary Problems
Lawyers for companies subject to federal health, safety and environmental regulation hope that stringent substantive judicial review will relieve their clients of the burdens of much regulation without the need for troublesome legislative battles they seem unable to win. McGarity argues that assigning a Daubert-like (Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc) gatekeeper role to courts engaged in judicial review of agency risk assessments is a profoundly bad idea.
Hearsay Exceptions: Adjusting The Ratio Of Intuition To Psychological Science, John E. B. Myers, Ingrid Cordon, Simona Ghetti, Gail S. Goodman
Hearsay Exceptions: Adjusting The Ratio Of Intuition To Psychological Science, John E. B. Myers, Ingrid Cordon, Simona Ghetti, Gail S. Goodman
Law and Contemporary Problems
Myers explores hearsay exeptions by examining three exceptions: excited utterances, statements for purposes of diagnosis or treatment, and the residual hearsay exception. The focus is child declarants, and these exceptions play key roles in child abuse litigation.
Applying Suggestibility Research To The Real World: The Case Of Repeated Questions, Thomas D. Lyon
Applying Suggestibility Research To The Real World: The Case Of Repeated Questions, Thomas D. Lyon
Law and Contemporary Problems
One can discern two parallel trends in the law and the psychology of child witnesses. In the law, appellate courts are beginning to stem the once powerful movement to increase the acceptance of children's testimony and the admissibility of children's out-of-court statements. Lyon analyzes particular strands of each trend.
The Maturation And Disintegration Of The Hearsay Exception For Statements For Medical Examination In Child Sexual Abuse Cases, Robert P. Mosteller
The Maturation And Disintegration Of The Hearsay Exception For Statements For Medical Examination In Child Sexual Abuse Cases, Robert P. Mosteller
Law and Contemporary Problems
Mosteller examines the treatment of children as victims and witnesses in criminal trials, most frequently involving sexual abuse, over the last quarter of the twentieth century, and from that experience, to draw lessons. He also examines what has been learned about the hearsay exception for "statements for purposes of medical diagnosis of treatment."
Assessing Causation In Breast Implant Litigation: The Role Of Science Panels, Laural L. Hooper, Joe S. Cecil, Thomas E. Willging
Assessing Causation In Breast Implant Litigation: The Role Of Science Panels, Laural L. Hooper, Joe S. Cecil, Thomas E. Willging
Law and Contemporary Problems
In two recent cases, federal judges appointed panels of scientific experts to help assess conflicting scientific testimony regarding causation of systemic injuries by silicone gel breast implants. This article will describe the circumstances that gave rise to the appointments, the procedures followed in making the appointments and reporting to the courts, and the reactions of the participants in the proceedings.
Of Cherries, Fudge, And Onions: Science And Its Courtroom Perversion, David W. Peterson, John M. Conley
Of Cherries, Fudge, And Onions: Science And Its Courtroom Perversion, David W. Peterson, John M. Conley
Law and Contemporary Problems
The thesis of this article is that the Supreme Court decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc.'s focus on the scientific method, however rigorously applied, invites certain classes of abuses. There are instances in which evidence can be made to look more scientific by a process that in fact and substance makes is utterly unscientific.
The Battle That Never Was: Congress, The White House, And Agency Litigation Authority, Neal Devins, Michael Herz
The Battle That Never Was: Congress, The White House, And Agency Litigation Authority, Neal Devins, Michael Herz
Law and Contemporary Problems
Department of Justice control of government litigation is discussed.
Private Litigation And The Deterrence Of Corporate Misconduct, James D. Cox
Private Litigation And The Deterrence Of Corporate Misconduct, James D. Cox
Law and Contemporary Problems
Cox discusses the linkage between private litigation and the deterrence of corporate misconduct.
Deterrence Of Corporate Fraud Through Securities Litigation: The Role Of Institutional Investors, Keith L. Johnson
Deterrence Of Corporate Fraud Through Securities Litigation: The Role Of Institutional Investors, Keith L. Johnson
Law and Contemporary Problems
Johnson suggests that institutions are uniquely positioned to enhance the deterrence function of securities litigation without undermining the compensation goal.
Preempting Unintended Consequences, A. A. Sommer Jr.
Preempting Unintended Consequences, A. A. Sommer Jr.
Law and Contemporary Problems
Sommer offers some insights on preemption. The case for preemption is that there is an inherent logic and consistency in having litigation involving nationally traded securities resolved in a single forum.
Medical Malpractice And Managed Care Organizations: The Implied Warranty Of Quality, William S. Brewbaker Iii
Medical Malpractice And Managed Care Organizations: The Implied Warranty Of Quality, William S. Brewbaker Iii
Law and Contemporary Problems
Managed care organizations (MCOs) have become prime targets in the new medical malpractice litigation, but getting a judgment against an MCO can be difficult. It is argued that courts should impose a tort-based implied warranty of quality on MCOs, under which they would be liable for selling physician services that are negligently rendered.
The Road From Medical Injury To Claims Resolution: How No-Fault And Tort Differ, Frank A. Sloan, Kathryn Whetten-Goldstein, Stephen S. Entman, Elizabeth D. Kulas, Emily M. Stout
The Road From Medical Injury To Claims Resolution: How No-Fault And Tort Differ, Frank A. Sloan, Kathryn Whetten-Goldstein, Stephen S. Entman, Elizabeth D. Kulas, Emily M. Stout
Law and Contemporary Problems
In the area of medical malpractice, no-fault has been offered as a response to the criticisms leveled against tort litigation for medical injuries. Five issues of no-fault are examined within the context of obstetrical malpractice.
Adapting Mediation To Link Resolution Of Medical Malpractice Dispute With Health Care Quality Improvement, Edward A. Dauer, Leonard J. Marcus
Adapting Mediation To Link Resolution Of Medical Malpractice Dispute With Health Care Quality Improvement, Edward A. Dauer, Leonard J. Marcus
Law and Contemporary Problems
It is hypothesized that mediation in either a fault-based or a no-fault environment can make claims resolution more efficient and simultaneously promote quality improvement in health care more effectively than does the litigation/settlement process.
Confidentiality And Disclosure In Accreditation, Timothy Stoltzfus Jost
Confidentiality And Disclosure In Accreditation, Timothy Stoltzfus Jost
Law and Contemporary Problems
The law and the internal policies of accrediting entities have protected the confidentiality of accreditation information, but regulators who rely on accreditation decisions for public purposes are demanding greater access to this information. The litigation involving access to accrediting information is examined.
The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure In The Context Of Transnational Law, George K. Walker
The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure In The Context Of Transnational Law, George K. Walker
Law and Contemporary Problems
The development of exceptions in the Rules of Civil Procedure and federal statutes that apply only to litigants outside the US is explored. The Rules should not make exceptions on a blanket basis, as some proposals indicate.
The Reluctant Partner: Making Procedural Law For International Civil Litigation, Stephen B. Burbank
The Reluctant Partner: Making Procedural Law For International Civil Litigation, Stephen B. Burbank
Law and Contemporary Problems
Although the US has been a member of the Hague Conference on Private International Law Since 1964, other members may doubt the US' willingness to abide by the international obligations it has incurred. The US' ambivalence regarding international commitments is examined.
The Hague Evidence Convention Revisited: Reflections On Its Role In U.S. Civil Procedure, Gary B. Born
The Hague Evidence Convention Revisited: Reflections On Its Role In U.S. Civil Procedure, Gary B. Born
Law and Contemporary Problems
A reworking of the basic terms of the Hague Evidence Convention is proposed. Under current law, US courts typically do not employ the Convention's evidence-taking mechanisms when ordering discovery from either a litigant or a witness subject to the court's subpoena power.
International Control Of Civil Procedure: Who Benefits?, Robert B. Von Mehren
International Control Of Civil Procedure: Who Benefits?, Robert B. Von Mehren
Law and Contemporary Problems
The work of the Hague Conference on Private International Law in the field of civil litigation is considered, focusing particularly on the Service Convention and the Evidence Convention. The international community has benefited from the work of the Hague Conference through cooperation under its auspices.