Download or read book Meaningful Tort Reform written by Todd J. Zywicki and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using public choice tools, this article examines why tort reform is necessary but also elusive. Identifying the demand-side and supply-side forces that have caused tort law to evolve away from efficient rules, the article shows why the courts are an unlikely venue for meaningful tort reform. Turning to the legislature, the article identifies the necessary conditions for successful tort reform efforts.
Download or read book Tort Reform Plaintiffs Lawyers and Access to Justice written by Stephen Daniels and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2015-06-05 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tort reform is a favorite cause for many business leaders and right-leaning politicians, who contend that out-of-control lawsuits throttle growth and inflate costs, particularly in healthcare. Less is said about how such reforms might affect the ability of individuals to recover damages for injuries suffered through another party's negligence. On that count, Texas--where efforts at tort reform have been energetic and successful--provides an opportunity to appraise the outcome for plaintiffs and their lawyers, an opportunity that Stephen Daniels and Joanne Martin take full advantage of in this timely and provocative work. Because much of the action on tort reform takes place on the state level, a look at the experience of Texas, a large and important state with a very active plaintiff's bar, is especially instructive. Plaintiffs' lawyers work on a contingency fee basis, collecting compensation for themselves as a percentage only if they win. Reduce lawyers' ability to use contingency fees as compensation, as tort reform inevitably does, and you reduce their economic incentive to do this work. Daniels and Martin’s study bears this out. Drawing on over 20 years of research, extensive surveys and interviews, the authors explore the impact the tort reform movement in Texas has had on the ability of plaintiffs to obtain judgments--in short on private citizens' meaningful access to the full power of the law. In the course of their analysis, the authors explain the history and economics behind the workings of the plaintiffs’ bar. They explore how lawyers select cases and clients, as well as the referral process that moves cases among lawyers and allows for specialization. They also examine the effects of medical malpractice reforms on plaintiffs' lawyers--reforms that often close the courthouse doors to certain types of people--tort reform's "hidden victims." Plaintiffs' lawyers are the civil justice system's gatekeepers, providing meaningful access to the rights the law provides. Daniels and Martin’s thorough and fair-minded work offers a unique and sobering perspective on how tort reform can curtail this access--and thus, the legal rights of American citizens.
Download or read book Tort Reform by Contract written by Paul H. Rubin and published by American Enterprise Institute. This book was released on 1993 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author argues that there is a current crisis in tort law and advocates that a return to a more widespread use of contracts in three areas - product liability, medical malpractice, and some aspects of automobile accidents. Such contracts, he suggests, should be allowed by the courts.
Download or read book Doubling Down for Defendants written by Scott DeVito and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 57 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tort reform legislation developed as a response to a series of insurance crises and reactions that blamed the personal injury compensation system for those problems. Since measures of tort reform have been adopted, many researchers have analyzed their effects within and beyond the legal system, assessing how they affect damages, insurance claims, health costs, and physician supply.Our study analyzes an underdeveloped area of research: the effect of tort reform on the filing of cases in court. Using two databases of state court filing data over 12 years, we examine how a damages cap for medical negligence claims affects case filings in the years immediately after its adoption. With several test states, we find that when a state adopts med mal damages caps, there is a statistically significant drop of 23 percent in med mal filings. We confirm this effect by also measuring the effect of a cap's nullification, and find that in the aftermath of a cap's removal case filings increase by 29 percent. Our work can therefore confirm and quantify the effect of damages caps on case filing.Yet these findings become more significant when we consider them along with a new and interesting study from the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. In their 2013 study, Myungho Paik, Bernard Black, and David Hyman found that filings of med mal torts have decreased in the last decade, not only in tort reform states but also in states without it! If so, our finding of a statistically significant drop in med mal filings in response to tort reform has a “doubling-down” effect: there is one reduction in filings due to tort reform, and also a background reduction in filings based on larger, non-statutory changes.We believe that our findings regarding the effect of tort reform on med mal filings and the “doubling-down” effect significantly modify the cost-benefit analysis of tort reform. The positive impacts of tort reform have been significantly oversold, and the effects of tort reform disproportionately impact certain vulnerable citizens. If so, we believe that claimants are being doubly squeezed without significant public benefit. We therefore suggest that state legislators reconsider these efforts, or risk court intervention due to equal protection challenges.
Download or read book Tort Reform written by Paul Ruschmann and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2005 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines both sides of the current tort reform debate: should courts reduce the scope of defendants' liability to avoid economic decline, or would that change simply enrich large corporations at the expense of average Americans?
Download or read book Judge and Jury written by Eric Helland and published by Independent Institute. This book was released on 2015-08-24 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is the U.S. tort system in crisis? CBS television's 60 Minutes has said the tort system metes out "jackpot justice," and Newsweek has called America a "Lawsuit Hell." Other observers of the legal system, however, argue that the tort crisis is a myth. Although both sides of the debate rely primarily on anecdote and the selective use of evidence, a sound diagnosis of the tort system requires a rigorous analysis of hard data, not a retelling of sensationalistic sound bites. In Judge and Jury: American Tort Law on Trial, economists Eric Helland and Alexander Tabarrok present their study of tens of thousands of tort cases from across the United States. The result is the most complete picture of the U.S. system of civil justice to date. Examining three of the key players of the tort system (juries, judges, and lawyers), Helland and Tabarrok conclude that the tort system is badly broken in some respects but functions surprisingly well in others.
Download or read book Assessing the Effects of Tort Reforms written by Stephen J. Carroll and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report offers a framework for assessing the effects of tort reforms. It attempts to provide a coherent structure for systematically thinking about how research can contribute to the policy debate over tort reform. It identifies four basic policy issues critical to assessing the effects of tort reforms on the tort system: (1) how soon we can expect to see effects of reforms; (2) whether reforms have affected the outcomes of disputes; (3) who won, who lost, and how much; and (4) whether reforms have affected economic behavior. The author points out that the kinds of data needed to assess the effects of reform are generally not available, and suggests that three types of new data collection systems need to be considered: (1) systematic efforts to obtain data from insurers and self-insured defendants on the aggregate outcomes of liability claims; (2) special surveys of claimants, the bar, and insurers to obtain the detailed individual claim information needed to identify the winners and losers in the reformed system; and (3) systems for collecting information both on the other factors that affect the behavior of participants in the tort system, and on economic outcomes and injuries.
Download or read book An Empirical Study of the Effects of Tort Reforms on the Rate of Tort Filings written by Han-Duck Lee and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book An Empirical Study of the Impact of Tort Reforms on Medical Malpractice Settlement Payments written by and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study evaluates the impact of six different types of tort reforms on the frequency, size and number of total annual settlements in medical malpractice cases between 1991 and 1998. Previous studies have failed to correctly identify the effective dates of reforms, to account for the retroactive applicability of striking down reforms, or used highly selected samples of jury verdicts or litigated cases. I employ a new legal data set of tort reforms, which carefully evaluates effective dates as well as when certain laws were overturned. Medical malpractice data comes from the National Practitioner Data Bank, which contains more than 100,000 malpractice settlement payments in the study time frame. The data represent the universe of cases in which doctors paid a positive settlement. Thus, the present study has significant advantages over previous work for being the first study to systematically and adequately explore the impact of tort reform on settlements (in contrast to judgments). Of the six tort reforms examined, two reforms (caps on pain-and-suffering damages and limitations on joint and several liability) reduced the number of annual payments, and two reforms (caps on pain-and-suffering damages and the periodic payment reform) reduced average awards. Caps on non-economic damages had an effect on total annual payments, although the statistical significance of that effect was weak. The joint effect of enacting all six reforms was statistically significant for reducing the number of cases but not the state level average award or total payments.
Download or read book Tort Reform and Innovation written by Alberto Galasso and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Current academic and policy debates focus on the impact of tort reforms on physicians’ behavior and medical costs. This paper examines whether these reforms also affect incentives to develop new technologies. We find that laws which limit the liability exposure of healthcare providers are associated with a 13 percent reduction in medical device patenting. Tort reforms have the strongest impact in medical fields in which malpractice litigation is more frequent, and do not seem to affect the propensity to develop technologies of the highest and lowest quality. Our results underscore the importance of considering dynamic effects in economic analysis of tort laws.
Download or read book Tort Reform written by Charles B Camp and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Empirical Effects of Tort Reform written by Theodore Eisenberg and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tort reforms enacted in response to asserted crises date back to the 1970s and have emphasized the highly visible areas of punitive damages, medical malpractice, and products liability. Little evidence exists that reform of punitive damages affected the ratio between punitive and compensatory damages. This is consistent with the absence of evidence that punitive damages were ever out of control and in need of reform. Evidence of the effect of tort reform in the medical malpractice field is mixed. Caps on non-economic damages have reduced costs, thereby likely decreasing pressure on hospitals to improve care. Consistent evidence of effects on physician behavior and physician supply has not emerged. Tort reform has rarely sought to address the well-established problem of widespread harm caused by poor quality care. Products liability plaintiffs have had decreasing success over time. While one cannot rule out specific statutory reforms as achieving more favorable results for defendants, the national scope of plaintiffs' declining success supports an explanation based on the social construction of knowledge by well-funded industry groups.
Download or read book Report of the Governor s Advisory Committee on Tort Reform written by Georgia. Governor's Advisory Committee on Tort Reform and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Materials on Tort Reform written by Andrew F. Popper and published by West Academic Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This succinct paperback on tort reform lays bare one of the most important recent movements in the civil justice field. It begins with a brief overview of central themes and issues and then presents a series of original essays and comments by preeminent scholars, lawyers, and leaders in Tort Reform. The essays are followed by fictional narratives written from the standpoint of plaintiffs, defendants, and policymakers; a simulation; and a selection of carefully edited articles, government documents, interest group position papers, and cases. Comments, notes, and questions are interspersed throughout the text.
Download or read book The Preliminary Impact of 2001 Florida Tort Reform on Nursing Facility Litigation in One County written by Deborah K. Hedgecock and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ABSTRACT: Since a substantial increase in lawsuits, settlements, jury trial awards, and insurance premiums involving nursing facilities began in the mid 1990s, addressing litigation has been a growing concern for the industry, consumers and their families, insurance carriers, and state and national elected officials. Curbing lawsuit growth has mirrored medical malpractice containment efforts, focusing on the addition of laws to inhibit litigation. The state of Florida initiated such tort reforms along with mandatory increased nursing facility staffing in 2001. Through secondary data analyses, this study examined the initial effects of Florida's tort reform measures. Lawsuits filed (N = 546) against any Hillsborough County nursing facility (N = 33) from 1999 through 2003 were reviewed. One-way analyses of variance and two-way contingency tables were used to identify variations in the elements, extent, and outcome of lawsuits between pre and post tort reform periods. Based on nursing facility admission dates, post tort reform lawsuits exhibited multiple significant changes. Lawsuits filed per month dropped to 14% of pre reform monthly filings. On average, lawsuits were associated with shorter residencies, were filed earlier, and settled six months sooner. They were less apt to include combined wrongful death and negligence survival damage claims, charges intentionally addressed by reform measures in order to eliminate double damage claims. Other lawsuit charges increased, e.g., lethal negligence and breach of fiduciary duty. Mediation was less likely and arbitration attempts more likely to be documented in lawsuits. Mean somatic allegations did not change significantly. Staff-related allegations decreased 21.5% to 8.51 per lawsuit, with 12 out of 22 staff-related allegations decreasing significantly. On average, settlement proposals, total settlements, and attorney fees decreased to 40% and net plaintiff awards to 25% of pre reform amounts. Overall, it appears that 2001 tort reform impacted post reform litigation substantially. However, further research examining a larger post reform lawsuit sample and longer post reform period is required to verify that research findings are stable and reflect sustained changes. Other factors, e.g., decreased nursing facility professional liability insurance coverage, may have affected the numbers and characteristics of lawsuits filed and require further investigation as well.
Download or read book Tort Reform Briefing Book written by Texans for Lawsuit Reform and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Need for Tort Reform written by John D. Stephenson and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
