Torts Commons^™

Rejoinder: Advances In The Analysis, Marshall S. Shapo

San Diego Law Review

This brief Rejoinder addresses two levels of issues: broad questions involved in the effort to establish a critical overview of injury law and questions more precisely bound up with products liability law. The author lauds the Reporters' Study on Enterprise Responsibility for Personal Injury on its significant contribution to academic debate in this country, and for its openness to a competition of many divergent ideas in the context of organizational culture. Despite the problems that this author noted in his first Article in this symposium, he recognizes the achievement of the Study, and the genuine advance that it provides in …

The American Law Institute's Reporters' Study On Enterprise Responsibility For Personal Injury: Reforming The Tort System

San Diego Law Review

In 1986 a number of prominent legal scholars embarked upon a project commissioned by the American Law Institute to re-examine contemporary tort and personal injury law. Five years later, the results of this project came to fruition in a two-volume study entitled Reporters' Study on Enterprise Responsibility for Personal Injury. After a year's debate within the American Law Institute about the broad range of issues canvassed by the Study, the Institute's Executive Council endorsed the value of the Study for deliberations about tort reform going on in both legislative and judicial forums. This is the introductory chapter of each volume …

Innocents And Experience: The Disturbing Record Of Legal Reform In Montana, Greg Munro

Faculty Journal Articles & Other Writings

This article provides a summary of the legacy of "tort reform" in Montana in the areas of medical negligence, workers' compensation, immunities, damages, and a miscellaneous grouping that includes product liability, joint and several liability, wrongful discharge, insurance consumers, arbitration, and collateral-source rule.

Products Liability Tort Reform: Why Virginia Should Adopt The Henderson Twerski Proposed Revision Of Section 402a, Restatement (Second) Of Torts, Peter N. Swisher

Law Faculty Publications

The purpose of this Article is fourfold: first, to illustrate that there is currently a newer, more balanced consensus view in American products liability law today; second, to demonstrate that this current, realistically balanced, consensus in American products liability law is persuasively codified in a proposed revision to section 402A, Restatement (Second) of Torts, by Professors James Henderson and Aaron Twerski; third, to compare and contrast current Virginia products liability law with the Henderson- Twerski proposed revision of section 402A; fourth, to propose new legislation in Virginia that would incorporate the Henderson-Twerski proposal, and would realistically reform existing Virginia products …

Will A New Restatement Help Settle Troubled Waters: Reflections, James A. Henderson Jr., Aaron Twerski

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Private Insurance, Social Insurance, And Tort Reform: Toward A New Vision Of Compensation For Illness And Injury, Kenneth S. Abraham, Lance Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

The United States does not have a system for compensating the victims of illness and injury; it has a set of different institutions that provide compensation. We rely on both tort law and giant programs of public and private insurance to compensate the victims of illness and injury. These institutions perform related functions, but the relationships among them are far from coherent. Indeed, the institutions sometimes work at cross-purposes, compensating some victims excessively and others not at all.

The absence of a coherent system of compensation is reflected even in suggested reforms of existing institutions. Proposals to reform tort law …

Reforming Products Liability, Suzanne M. Lambert

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Reforming Products Liability by W. Kip Viscusi

Interpretation Of The Statutory Modification Of Joint And Several Liability: Resisting The Deconstruction Of Tort Reform, Gregory C. Sisk

Seattle University Law Review

This Article defends RCW 4.22.070 and opposes the deconstruction of legislative tort reform. The Article’s premise is that the legislature did indeed intend to accomplish a significant reform of the liability system and to take a long, purposeful stride toward the implementation of comparative fault as applied to all parties in tort litigation. The Article concludes that the legislature adopted language that adequately, if sometimes imperfectly, achieves that purpose. The Article discusses the following: the meaning of “fault” as applicable through RCW 4.22.070; the nature of the entities to whom fault must be allocated; the responsibility for raising the culpability …

Pharmaceutical Product Liability May Be Hazardous To Your Health: A No-Fault Alternative To Concurrent Regulation, Gregory C. Jackson

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Legislative Reforms Of Governmental Tort Liability: Overreacting To Minimal Evidence, Ann Judith Gellis

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Deforming Tort Reform, Joseph A. Page

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The storms buffeting the tort system over the past two decades have come in three distinct waves. In the late 1960s, steep increases in the insurance costs incurred by health care providers protecting against negligence claims by patients triggered what came to be known as the "medical malpractice crisis." In the mid-1970s, manufacturers whose liability insurance premiums suddenly soared raised obstreperous complaints that called public attention to the existence of a "product liability crisis." Finally, other groups whose activities created risks exposing them to lawsuits found that their liability insurance rates had also risen precipitously. A full-blown "torts crisis" was …

A Fault-Based Administrative Alternative For Resolving Medical Malpractice Claims, Kirk B. Johnson, Carter G. Phillips, David Orentlicher Orentlicher M.D., Martin S. Hatlie

Vanderbilt Law Review

The recurring crises in medical malpractice litigation have been widely discussed and documented over the past two decades.' In response to these crises, a growing consensus has emerged among legislatures, government agencies, and scholars in favor of tort reform. Indeed, virtually every state has passed some tort reform legislation.'Despite the reforms, several serious problems persist in medical malpractice. The current tort system does not compensate injured patients adequately or equitably, nor does it deter negligent practices sufficiently. These failings occur despite the increasingly high costs to society of the tort system. Particularly troublesome is the impact of these crises on …

Statutory Damage Caps Are An Incomplete Reform: A Proposal For Attorney Fee Shifting In Tort Actions, Gregory A. Hicks

Articles

The premise of this article is that the currently unsettled status of noneconomic damage awards offers an opportunity to reexamine the function of such awards, and to move tort law in the direction of more stable and rational remedies, something that could not be achieved either under recently adopted damage cap statutes or through the reinstatement of unrestricted compensation of noneconomic losses.

This article has two parts. In the first part, the ambiguous role of noneconomic damages, that is, their function as makeweight compensation for noncompensable litigation expenses and as compensation for real intangible injuries, is described. This ambiguity has …

Negligent Accounting And The Limits Of Instrumental Tort Reform, John A. Siliciano

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Negligent Accounting And The Limits Of Instrumental Tort Reform, John A. Siliciano

Michigan Law Review

This article first explores the relationship between the accountant and the reliant third party, and recounts the mounting judicial hostility to the accountant's traditional privity defense. Next, the article critically examines the arguments that have supported traditional privity-based regimes. The third section turns to the reform courts and tests whether the rationales offered for reform justify abandoning the privity requirement.

Concluding that a convincing case for reform has yet to be made and - given the complexity of a properly executed instrumental analysis - may never be made, the article's final section reconsiders the utility of instrumental reasoning as a …

An America's Cup For Tort Reform? Australia And America Compared, Jeffrey O'Connell, David Partlett

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The issue of tort reform has descended from Ivory Towers to populist politics. A few years ago no one could have predicted that "tort reform" would become political argot and a stirring election slogan. Some in the United States see the tort crisis and the stimulus for reform as somehow uniquely American. This Article shows instead that many advanced, industrialized societies are discussing tort reform initiatives actively. The precise nature of the problems, the reasons for reform, and the shape of solutions will be fashioned by indigenous culture, tradition, and the uncertainties of politics. In the common-law world, however, a …

Corporate Behavior And The Social Efficiency Of Tort Law, John A. Siliciano

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Proposal To Cap Tort Liability: Avoiding The Pitfalls Of Heightened Rationality, Richard S. Kuhl

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note sets forth a model statute that limits high damage awards, yet will withstand the rigors of judicial scrutiny. After presenting a brief background of the medical malpractice crisis in Part I, Part II outlines the standards of equal protection review that the courts are presently using. The Note then focuses on the constitutional challenges to caps on medical malpractice liability in Part III. Part IV discusses the values and interests that were found to be dispositive in the courts' decisions. Finally, after analyzing the criteria that must be met to ensure that a legislative limitation will survive judicial …

Medical Maloccurrence Insurance: A First Party No-Fault Insurance Proposal For Resolving The Medical Malpractice Insurance Controversy, Larry M. Pollack

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Part I of this Note examines the broad, underlying themes of tort theory and argues that, in general, the tort system's primary responsibility should be compensation, rather than deterrence of risk taking. In so far as the production of goods and services causes injury, such losses should be shared and spread as widely and proportionately as possible. Part II discusses the history and nature of the medical malpractice insurance crisis. Part III evaluates the numerous systemic solutions suggested by various commentators. Finally, Part IV proposes a new solution: first party, no-fault medical maloccurrence insurance (MMI).

Rethinking The Class Action: A Policy Primer On Reform, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

Today, virtually everyone has a proposal for "reforming" class action litigation but both consensus and coherence are lacking. Some proposals are bluntly restrictive. For example, the Reagan Administration would reduce attorney's fees, place a ceiling on product liability, and partially repeal treble damage statutes. In the same vein, the United States Supreme Court has shown itself parsimonious on the question of fee awards, by authorizing fee waivers, approving offers of settlement that seemingly permit fee shifting against the plaintiff's attorney, and curtailing the traditional bases on which a fee award may be enhanced. Other proposals have offered essentially neutral procedural …