Civil law—the body of laws of a state or nation dealing with the rights of private citizens—seeks to resolve noncriminal disputes such as disagreements over property ownership or damage, insurance, contracts, divorce, and child custody. RAND helps make the civil justice system more efficient and more equitable by supplying government and private decisionmakers and the public with the results of objective, empirically based, analytic research.
The RAND Institute for Civil Justice (ICJ) conducts research on all aspects of civil justice, from trends in litigation and jury verdicts to punitive damages, compensation systems, and alternative dispute resolution. Directly or indirectly, civil justice issues have an impact on us all.
Report
Describes several approaches for detecting racial profiling by police and calls for their use in monitoring the implementation of state and local immigration laws.
Report
Opponents of product liability claim that liability reduces product availability, increases prices, and discourages innovation. Supporters claim that liability uncovers information about drug hazards and deters socially undesirable corporate behavior.
Journal Article
The average physician spends nearly 11 percent of an assumed forty-year career with an unresolved, open malpractice claim. The long time it takes for a case is resolved is distressing for both doctor and patient.
Journal Article
In this survey of six state mental health telephone consultation program directors, we report the annual number of children referred for consultation and the number of lawsuits against consultant clinicians.
Journal Article
In this Response, the author sketches two problems with Professor Doug Kysar's argument regarding climate change litigation and effect on tort law.
Blog
Computerized clinical decision support (CDS) systems have been developed to enhance physician decisionmaking and reduce the incidence of avoidable medical errors. Drug-drug interaction warnings are a mainstay of CDS systems, but they give rise to a fundamental problem that limits the utility of the systems to date.
Journal Article
The authors assessed the appropriateness of recommendations for hysterectomies done for nonemergency and nononcologic indications for 497 California women. Seventy percent of the hysterectomies were judged to have been recommended inappropriately.
Journal Article
New electronic clinical decision support (CDS) systems are intended to reduce medical errors but sometimes have the unexpected and perverse effect of overwhelming physicians with potential warnings about trivial events, particularly regarding drug-drug interactions.
Journal Article
The risk of medical malpractice varies substantially according to physician specialty.
News Release
The quest for greater transparency in the American civil justice system is the topic of a new book of essays illustrating how a balanced approach to increasing transparency can improve the civil justice system, raise public confidence and protect litigants' privacy.
Report
Some argue that the confidentiality of the civil justice system keeps it working efficiently and fairly; others argue that the public is being denied information about hazards that may cause harm. A balanced approach to increasing transparency can improve the system, raise public confidence, and protect litigants' privacy.
Research Brief
This research brief provides an overview of a collection of essays, a collaborative project by the UCLA-RAND Center for Law and Public Policy, examining the trade-offs between transparency and confidentiality in the civil justice system.
Report
This report details the resources required to comply with electronic-discovery requests and suggests ways to reduce those costs, as well as address concerns about duties to preserve data in anticipation of litigation.
Report
A preliminary assessment of the impact of the financial crisis on the civil justice system finds that litigation demands on some parts of the system have increased, that funding for state courts may be trending downward, and that there have been disruptions in the legal services economy, in the provision of legal aid, and in the operation and staffing of courts.
Report
Discusses innovation's role in the legal services industry, factors affecting innovation's production, and the research and data infrastructure needed by policymakers to understand whether restrictions on the practice of the law should be altered.
Research Brief
The most comprehensive analysis of the risk of malpractice claims by physician specialty in more than two decades finds that U.S. physicians have a greater than 75% career-long risk of facing litigation. In some specialties, doctors can be virtually certain of a lawsuit over the course of their careers. However, the vast majority of those claims will not result in payment to a plaintiff.
Report
Asbestos bankruptcy trusts—created to compensate people injured by the mineral—may be influencing tort cases. The current way that the trusts and the tort cases are linked together may result in payments that are not consistent with the basic principles of the tort liability system.
News Release
Asbestos bankruptcy trusts—created to compensate people injured by the mineral—may be influencing tort cases. The current way that the trusts and the tort cases are linked together may result in payments that are not consistent with the basic principles of the tort liability system.
Research Brief
People with asbestos injuries are increasingly receiving compensation from trusts set up by bankrupt asbestos defendants. This brief documents how courts handling these cases consider trust payments when determining compensation.
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