Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Does Tort Reform Affect The Market For Lawyers? Evidence From The U.S States., Ablaye Camara

Wayne State University Dissertations

This paper investigates the determinants of the market for lawyers with a focus on demand variables including tort reform laws. In this study, I used the Feasible Generalized Least Squared method and a Panel Corrected Standard Error method, with year and State identifiers applied to a panel of U.S states, to estimate the determinants of the Number of Lawyers. I also used the Fixed Effect model with year and state identifiers to evaluate the effects of these determinants on the Earnings of Lawyers.

The findings show that the Lagged Number of Lawyers and the Lagged Alternative Earnings are both significant …

Joyless Life And Lifeless Joy: The Recovery Of Hedonic Damages By Plaintiffs In A Persistent Vegetative State, Alexandra Preece

San Diego Law Review

This Comment focuses on the potential injustice to patients in a persistent vegetative state and the proper manner in which to handle these cases. Based on tort principles underlying the justification for the award of damages to plaintiffs, including deterrence and compensation, plaintiffs in a persistent vegetative state should be entitled to damages for loss of enjoyment of life. To allow for these awards, courts must separate loss of enjoyment of life from pain and suffering, thereby allowing vegetative plaintiffs who cannot prove that they are in pain to recover hedonic damages from their wrongdoers. Part II discusses the effects …

The Shifting Terrain Of Risk And Uncertainty On The Liability Insurance Field, Tom Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

Recent sociological and historical work suggests that insurance risks often are not reliably calculable, except in hindsight. Insurance is “an uncertain business,” characterized by competition for premiums that pushes insurers into the unknown. This essay takes some preliminary steps that extend this insight into the liability insurance field. The essay first provides a simple quantitative comparison of U.S. property and liability insurance premiums over the last sixty years, setting the stage to make three points: (1) liability insurance premiums have grown at a similar rate as property insurance premiums and GDP over this period, providing yet another piece of evidence …

The Effects Of Tort Reform On Medical Malpractice Insurers’ Ultimate Losses, Patricia Born, W. Kip Viscusi, Tom Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

Whereas the literature evaluating the effect of tort reforms has focused on reported incurred losses, this paper examines the long run effects using a comprehensive sample by state of individual firms writing medical malpractice insurance from 1984-2003. The long run effects of reforms are greater than insurers' expected effects, as five year developed losses and ten year developed losses are below the initially reported incurred losses for those years following reform measures. The quantile regressions show the greatest effects of joint and several liability limits, noneconomic damages caps, and punitive damages reforms for the firms that are at the high …

Framing The Choice Between Cash And Courthouse: Experiences With The 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, Gillian K. Hadfield

Gillian K Hadfield

In this paper I report the results of a quantitative and qualitative empirical study of how those who were injured or lost a family member in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks evaluated the tradeoff between a cash payment--available through the Victim Compensation Fund--and the pursuit of litigation. Responses make it clear that potential plaintiffs saw much more at stake than monetary compensation and that the choice to forego litigation required the sacrifice of important non-monetary, civic, values: obtaining and publicizing information about what happened, prompting public findings of accountability for those responsible, and participating in the process of ensuring …

Loss, Heidi Li Feldman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Within Republican political circles, numerous state legislatures, and even the U.S. Congress, advocating caps on "noneconomic" damages in tort suits is in vogue, as part of the ongoing politics of "tort reform." Yet, the distinction between "economic" and "noneconomic" damages is nonsensical. It does not originate in the discipline of economics, but seems instead to be purely a rhetorical invention of those who wish to limit damages by any means politically possible. But law reform based on sheer rhetoric should be shunned; unprincipled rhetoric is no substitute for justificatory reasons, and to make laws without reasons exemplifies arbitrariness and injustice. …

The Effects Of Malpractice Tort Reform On Defensive Medicine, Heather M. O'Neill, Katherine D. Hennesy

Business and Economics Faculty Publications

Medical malpractice crises occur across states to differing degrees, thus the proposed changes in state tort reforms differ accordingly. The primary overt goals of tort reform aim to address: rising medical malpractice insurance rates, increased frequency and severity of awards, and the increased incidence of doctors shuttering offices or fleeing states due to untoward malpractice environments. A secondary goal of tort reform is to reduce health care costs attributed to malpractice costs. Clearly, as malpractice tort reforms are debated in state capitols and reforms take place, the effects of the reforms on the goals above can be examined. However, there …

The Effects Of Malpractice Tort Reform On Defensive Medicine, Katherine D. Hennesy, Heather M. O'Neill

Business and Economics Faculty Publications

Positive defensive medicine occurs when physicians order additional tests or procedures primarily to avoid malpractice liability. This paper shows the degree of defensive medicine occurring across states is related to the malpractice environment in the states. As the environment changes due to malpractice tort reform, defensive medicine practices also change. This paper shows the existence of positive defensive medicine and how it adds to total health care expenditures for head trauma victims in 23 states in 2000. Moreover, given different malpractice environments across states, we witness variations in defensive medicine practices leading to differences in health care expenditures.

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 …

The American Law Institute's Reporters' Study On Enterprise Responsibility For Personal Injury: Perspectives On The Tort System And The Liability Crisis

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 …

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 …

Comments On The Reporters' Study Of Enterprise Responsibility For Personal Injury, Jerry J. Phillips

San Diego Law Review

This Article critiques the substantive law and damage proposals of the Reporters' Study on Enterprise Liability, which was published in 1991 by the American Law Institute. Contrary to the Reporters' recommendations, the author proposes retaining the consumer expectations test and strict liability for product suppliers. He argues that it is not practical to shift medical malpractice liability, as proposed by the Study, from doctors to hospitals. In the area of damages, the author proposes retaining the rules of recovery for pain and suffering, punitive damages, and the collateral source rules essentially as they are now, instead of adopting the changes …

The American Law Institute's Reporters' Study On Enterprise Responsibility For Personal Injury: A Timely Call For Punitive Damages Reform, Victor E. Schwarz, Mark A. Behrens

San Diego Law Review

This Article focuses on the Reporters' Study on Enterprise Responsibility for Personal Injury, specifically the Reporters' recommendations for punitive damages reform. The Article discusses the Study's analysis of the need for punitive damages reform, with which the author agrees. The Article also discusses the Study's recommendations concerning reform of the standard by which punitive damages should be awarded, recommendations to set reasonable limits on the size of punitive damage awards, and the recommendation of a shield against punitive damages for products that comply with federal regulatory standards. The authors find that generally the recommendations are fair and reasonable. They believe …