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Full-Text Articles in Law

How Do The Elderly Fare In Medical Malpractice Litigation, Before And After Tort Reform? Evidence From Texas, Myungho Paik, Bernard S. Black, David A. Hyman, William M. Sage, Charles M. Silver Dec 2012

How Do The Elderly Fare In Medical Malpractice Litigation, Before And After Tort Reform? Evidence From Texas, Myungho Paik, Bernard S. Black, David A. Hyman, William M. Sage, Charles M. Silver

Faculty Scholarship

The elderly account for a disproportionate share of medical spending, but little is known about how they are treated by the medical malpractice system, or how tort reform affects elderly claimants. We compare paid medical malpractice claims brought by elderly plaintiffs in Texas during 1988–2009 to those brought by adult non-elderly plaintiffs. Controlling for healthcare utilization (based on inpatient days), elderly paid claims rose from about 20% to about 40% of the adult non-elderly rate by the early 2000s. Mean and median payouts per claim also converged, although the elderly were far less likely to receive large payouts. Tort reform …


Managerial Judging: The 9/11 Responders' Tort Litigation, Aaron D. Twerski, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, James A. Henderson, Jr Nov 2012

Managerial Judging: The 9/11 Responders' Tort Litigation, Aaron D. Twerski, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, James A. Henderson, Jr

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Real Remedies For Virtual Injuries, Anita Bernstein Jun 2012

Real Remedies For Virtual Injuries, Anita Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


California Drops The Ball: The Lack Of A Clear Approach To Recklessness In Sport Injury Litigation, Joseph Hnylka Jan 2012

California Drops The Ball: The Lack Of A Clear Approach To Recklessness In Sport Injury Litigation, Joseph Hnylka

Faculty Scholarship

Joseph Hnylka, California Drops the Ball: The Lack of a Clear Approach to Recklessness in Sport Injury Litigation, 1 Virginia Sports & Entertainment Law Journal 77 (2012).


Can Wrongful Death Damages Recovered By A Married Person Be Separate Property Under California Law?, William A. Reppy Jr. Jan 2012

Can Wrongful Death Damages Recovered By A Married Person Be Separate Property Under California Law?, William A. Reppy Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

Existing California judicial precedent uniformly holds that damages recovered by a married person based on the wrongful death of a relative of the married person during the marriage—and while the spouses were not living separate and apart—is entirely community property. Under the theoretical basis for this community property classification, it is irrelevant that the person tortiously killed was a child or grandchild only of the plaintiff- or payee-spouse and had no legally recognized relationship to that party’s husband or wife, who becomes owner of half the recovery because of its classification as community property. This Article rejects this community property …


Further Perspectives On Corporate Wrongdoing, In Pari Delicto, And Auditor Malpractice, Deborah A. Demott Jan 2012

Further Perspectives On Corporate Wrongdoing, In Pari Delicto, And Auditor Malpractice, Deborah A. Demott

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


New Private Law Theory And Tort Law: A Comment, Keith N. Hylton Jan 2012

New Private Law Theory And Tort Law: A Comment, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

This comment was prepared for the Harvard Law Review symposium on “The New Private Law,” as a response to Benjamin Zipursky’s principal paper on torts. I find Zipursky’s reliance on Cardozo’s Palsgraf opinion as a foundational source of tort theory troubling, for two reasons. First, Cardozo fails to offer a consistent theoretical framework for tort law in his opinions, many of which are difficult to reconcile with one another. Second, Palsgraf should be understood as an effort by Cardozo to provide greater predictability, within a special class of proximate cause cases, by reallocating decision-making power from juries to judges. It …


Hidden Costs? Malpractice Allegations And Defensive Medicine Among Cardiac Surgeons, Barak D. Richman, Marco Huesch Jan 2012

Hidden Costs? Malpractice Allegations And Defensive Medicine Among Cardiac Surgeons, Barak D. Richman, Marco Huesch

Faculty Scholarship

This article evaluates the impact of private allegations of malpractice against cardiac surgeons on their patients’ outcomes and characteristics. While tort law may impact observable physician costs, malpractice allegations also impose hidden costs that could also affect physician behavior. We employ a large and multi-year panel dataset and patient-level analysis to ascertain whether malpractice allegations influence a surgeon’s practicing behavior. Using a generalized difference-in-difference model that controls for unobserved patient heterogeneity, clustering of patients within surgeon offices, contemporaneous expected risk, and other patient variables, we measure whether an allegation of malpractices affects a physician’s service intensity and use of healthcare …


Palsgraf, Punitive Damages, And Preemption, Benjamin C. Zipursky Jan 2012

Palsgraf, Punitive Damages, And Preemption, Benjamin C. Zipursky

Faculty Scholarship

This Article utilizes civil recourse theory along with a pragmatic conceptualist methodology to solve three problems in tort law: one on Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co., one on punitive damages (as seen in the Supreme Court’s struggles with Philip Morris v. Williams), and one on federal preemption (as seen in the Supreme Court’s 4-4 deadlock in Warner-Lambert Company v. Kent). Confusion has been generated by a failure to recognize that -- despite the many aspects of tort law that render it importantly public -- there is something distinctively private about the common law of torts. When one firmly rejects …


Freedom Of Expression And Its Competitors, George C. Christie Jan 2012

Freedom Of Expression And Its Competitors, George C. Christie

Faculty Scholarship

The recognition of an increasing number of basic human rights, such as in the European Convention on Human Rights, has had the paradoxical effect of requiring courts in the common-law world to consider whether the extensive protection given by the common law to expression that was not false or misleading must be modified to accommodate these newly recognized basic rights. The most important of these newly recognized rights is the right of privacy, although expression has other competitors as well, such as what might be called a right to be spared the emotional trauma caused by abusive language. This article …


Attorney General Bradford’S Opinion And The Alien Tort Statute, Curtis A. Bradley Jan 2012

Attorney General Bradford’S Opinion And The Alien Tort Statute, Curtis A. Bradley

Faculty Scholarship

In debates over the scope of the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), one historical document has played an especially prominent role. This document is a short opinion by U.S. Attorney General William Bradford, issued in the summer of 1795, concerning the involvement of U.S. citizens in an attack by a French fleet on a British colony in Sierra Leone. Numerous academic articles, judicial opinions, and litigation briefs have invoked the Bradford opinion, for a variety of propositions, and the opinion was discussed by both sides in the oral argument before the Supreme Court in the first hearing in the pending ATS …


Business Interests And The Long Arm In 2011, Paul D. Carrington Jan 2012

Business Interests And The Long Arm In 2011, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Brief Of Professors Of Law As Amici Curiae In Support Of Appellants, Neil Vidmar, David Zevan Jan 2012

Brief Of Professors Of Law As Amici Curiae In Support Of Appellants, Neil Vidmar, David Zevan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Defensive Medicine And Obstetric Practices, Michael D. Frakes Jan 2012

Defensive Medicine And Obstetric Practices, Michael D. Frakes

Faculty Scholarship

Using data on physician behavior from the 1979–2005 National Hospital Discharge Surveys (NHDS), I estimate the relationship between malpractice pressure, as identified by the adoption of non-economic damage caps and related tort reforms, and certain decisions faced by obstetricians during the delivery of a child. The NHDS data, supplemented with restricted geographic identifiers, provides inpatient discharge records from a broad enough span of states and covering a long enough period of time to allow for a defensive medicine analysis that draws on an extensive set of variations in relevant tort laws. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, I find no evidence …


Aiming At The Wrong Target: The "Audience Targeting" Test For Personal Jurisdiction In Internet Defamation Cases, Sarah H. Ludington Jan 2012

Aiming At The Wrong Target: The "Audience Targeting" Test For Personal Jurisdiction In Internet Defamation Cases, Sarah H. Ludington

Faculty Scholarship

In Young v. New Haven Advocate, 315 F.3d 256 (4th Cir. 2002), the Fourth Circuit crafted a jurisdictional test for Internet defamation that requires the plaintiff to show that the defendant specifically targeted an audience in the forum state for the state to exercise jurisdiction. This test relies on the presumption that the Internet — which is accessible everywhere — is targeted nowhere; it strongly protects foreign libel defendants who have published on the Internet from being sued outside of their home states. Other courts, including the North Carolina Court of Appeals, have since adopted or applied the test. The …


Recovery Of “Intrinsic Value” Damages In Case Of Negligently Killed Pet Dog, William A. Reppy Jr., Calley Gerber Jan 2012

Recovery Of “Intrinsic Value” Damages In Case Of Negligently Killed Pet Dog, William A. Reppy Jr., Calley Gerber

Faculty Scholarship

The North Carolina Court of Appeals, in a case where negligent killing of a pet dog with no market value was admitted, has denied recovery of “intrinsic” damages (also called “actual” damages). Shera v. NC State University Veterinary Teaching Hospital, 723 S.E.2d 352 (N.C. App. 2012). Because the holding is narrow and the type of damages denied are not the same as emotional damages, a close look at the decision is warranted.


Law, Economics, And The Burden(S) Of Proof, Eric L. Talley Jan 2012

Law, Economics, And The Burden(S) Of Proof, Eric L. Talley

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter presents an overview of the theoretical law and economics literature on the burden of proof within tort law. I begin by clarifying core legal definitions within this topic, demonstrating that the burden of proof actually refers to at least five doctrinal concepts that substantially overlap but are not completely interchangeable. I then provide a conceptual roadmap for analyzing the major extant contributions to this topic within theoretical law and economics, emphasizing three key dimensions that organize them: (a) where they fall in the positive-normative spectrum; (b) what type of underlying modeling framework they employ (ranging from decision theoretic …


Website Design And Liability, Nancy Kim Jan 2012

Website Design And Liability, Nancy Kim

Faculty Scholarship

Two regrettable behaviors have emerged online: the posting of content about others without their consent; and impulsive postings with no consideration of long-term consequences. Website operators can either encourage or discourage these regrettable behaviors and influence their consequences through the design of their website and by the fostering of norms and codes of conduct. Unfortunately, courts interpret section 230 of the Communications Decency Act as providing websites with broad immunity. In an earlier article, I argued that a proprietorship standard should be imposed upon websites, which would require them to take reasonable measures to prevent foreseeable harm. This article further …


The New Class Action Landscape: Trends And Developments In Class Certification And Related Topics, John C. Coffee Jr., Alexandra D. Lahav Jan 2012

The New Class Action Landscape: Trends And Developments In Class Certification And Related Topics, John C. Coffee Jr., Alexandra D. Lahav

Faculty Scholarship

In this memorandum, Professors Coffee and Lahav describe and assess the highlights of class certification rulings from 2005 to 2012, and track trends in approaches to certification.


An Economic Perspective On Preemption, Keith N. Hylton Jan 2012

An Economic Perspective On Preemption, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay has two goals. The first is to present an economic theory of preemption as a choice among regulatory regimes. The optimal regime choice model is used to generate specific implications for the court decisions on preemption of products liability claims. The second objective is to extrapolate from the regime choice model to consider its implications for broader controversies about preemption.