Legal Remedies Commons^™

Everything’S Bigger In Texas: Except The Medmal Settlements, Tom Baker, Eric Helland, Jonathan Klick

All Faculty Scholarship

Recent work using Texas closed claim data finds that physicians are rarely required to use personal assets in medical malpractice settlements even when plaintiffs secure judgments above the physician's insurance limits. In equilibrium, this should lead physicians to purchase less insurance. Qualitative research on the behavior of plaintiffs suggests that there is a norm under which plaintiffs agree not to pursue personal assets as long as defendants are not grossly underinsured. This norm operates as a soft constraint on physicians. All other things equal, while physicians want to lower their coverage, they do not want to violate the norm and …

Rethinking Principals Of Comparative Fault In Light Of California's Proposition 51, James A. Gash

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Big Business Beware: Punitive Damages Do Not Violate Fourteenth Amendment According To Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Co. V. Haslip, Christopher V. Carlyle

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Liability Insurance As Tort Regulation: Six Ways That Liability Insurance Shapes Tort Law In Action, Tom Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

Leaving aside difficult to interpret doctrinal developments, such as the abrogation of traditional immunities, liability insurance has at least the following six impacts on tort law in action. First, for claims against all but the wealthiest individuals and organizations, liability insurance is a de facto element of tort liability. Second, liability insurance limits are a de facto cap on tort damages. Third, tort claims are shaped to match the available liability insurance, with the result that liability insurance policy exclusions become de facto limits on tort liability. Fourth, liability insurance makes lawsuits against ordinary individuals and small organizations into repeat …

The Economic Treatment Of Automobile Injuries, Alfred F. Conard

Michigan Law Review

The automobile has changed more than Americans' ways of transportation. It has changed their ways of housing, of working and playing, of eating, living, and loving. It has also added to their ways of suffering and dying.

The suffering and dying have called forth two kinds of treatment. The better recognized kind is medical treatment, which staves off death and minimizes pain and disability among the living. The less recognized kind of treatment is economic-the restoration to the injury victim or to his dependents of some part of the economic wellbeing that has been snatched away from them by loss …