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Tort Law

Report
Asbestos Bankruptcy Trusts: An Overview of Trust Structure and Activity with Detailed Reports on the Largest Trusts
While legislative and judicial reforms have made it increasingly difficult to obtain compensation for nonmalignant diseases in the tort system, the trust system remains a source of compensation for such injuries. This report describes the creation, organization, and operation of asbestos personal-injury trusts and compiles publicly available information on the assets, outlays, and governing boards of the 26 largest ones.
Jul 26, 2010
News Release
Better Patient Safety Linked to Fewer Medical Malpractice Claims in California
Reducing the number of preventable patient injuries in California hospitals from 2001 to 2005 was associated with a corresponding drop in malpractice claims against physicians.
Apr 15, 2010
Research Brief
Does Improved Patient Safety Reduce Malpractice Litigation?
Investigates the relationship between safety outcomes in hospitals and malpractice claiming against providers, using data for California hospitals and insurers from 2001 through 2005.
Apr 7, 2010
Report
Better Patient Safety Linked to Fewer Medical Malpractice Claims in California
Reducing the number of preventable patient injuries in California hospitals from 2001 to 2005 was associated with a corresponding drop in malpractice claims against physicians.
Mar 26, 2010
News Release
No-Fault Automobile Insurance's Fall from Popularity Caused by Increased Medical Costs
No-fault automobile insurance, once seen as a way to limit court costs and lower premiums, has declined in popularity among both insurers and consumers because it largely has failed to accomplish either goal.
Feb 15, 2010
Research Brief
Diagnostic Abuse in Silica Litigation
This brief analyzes the factors that led to the exposure of widespread abuse in the diagnoses in thousands of silica injury claims in Texas, then suggests ways to uncover such abuses in mass personal-injury litigation more easily in the future.
Dec 4, 2009
Journal Article
The Effects of Product Liability Exemption in the Presence of the FDA
n the United States, drugs are jointly regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration, which oversees premarket clinical trials designed to ensure drug safety and efficacy, and the liability system, which allows patients to sue manufacturers for unsafe drugs. In this paper, the authors examine the potential welfare effects of this dual system to ensure the safety of medical products, and conclude that product liability exemptions for FDA regulated activities could raise economic efficiency.
Dec 1, 2009
Report
The Abuse of Medical Diagnostic Practices in Mass Litigation: The Case of Silica
Silica inhalation injury claims skyrocketed beginning in 2001, prompting concerns that silicia litigation would become a mass tort. It instead collapsed following the uncovering of abusive diagnostic practices, which can be decreased or even prevented if changes in several areas of litigation procedures are pursued.
Nov 13, 2009
Report
Change Medical Liability Laws to Reduce the Frequency and Severity of Claims
This document explores how changing medical liability laws to reduce the frequency and severity of claims would affect health system performance along nine dimensions.
Oct 12, 2009
Research Brief
Room for improvement: Strong patient safety systems could limit health, social and economic harms from medical error
RAND Europe reviewed the problem of patient harm in Europe, assessed expected effects of three policy action areas to improve safety and modelled the potential health benefits that could be achieved by reducing numbers of harmful events.
Sep 22, 2009
Journal Article
The Welfare Effects of Medical Malpractice Liability
The authors use variation in the generosity of local juries to identify the causal impact of malpractice liability on medical costs, mortality, and social welfare.
Jan 1, 2009
Journal Article
Do Non-Economic Damages Caps and Attorney Fee Limits Reduce Access to Justice for Victims of Medical Negligence?
Analyzes effects of noneconomic damages caps and attorney fee limits on the ability of people injured by negligent physicians to retain qualified lawyers to represent them
Dec 31, 2008
Journal Article
Group and Aggregate Litigation in the United States
While a class action such as one brought under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 23 is certainly the most well-known mechanism for aggregating large numbers of similar claims, other approaches include mass joinder of parties, mass consolidation of separate cases, or multidistrict litigation transfer of federal cases from across the country into a single action for pretrial processing; corporate reorganizations under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code; large-scale inventories of clients controlled by a single attorney; government-initiated enforcement actions; and private attorneys general litigation brought on behalf of the general public.
Dec 31, 2008
Research Brief
Do Policies That Target Physicians Who Make Medical Malpractice Payments Reduce Negligent Injuries?
This fact sheet describes a study that found that policies targeting physicians' medical malpractice payment histories as a way to deter medical malpractice are ineffective, mainly because paying physicians are not the negligent ones.
Aug 23, 2007
Report
Class Actions Against Insurers Rose Prior to Recent Reforms
The number of class action lawsuits filed against insurance companies in the United States increased sharply during the 1990s prior to the passage of the federal Class Action Fairness Act of 2005.
May 12, 2007
News Release
RAND Study Finds Class Actions Against Insurers Rose Prior to Recent Reforms and Many Cases Occurred Outside Public View
April 4, 2007 news release: RAND Study Finds Class Actions Against Insurers Rose Prior to Recent Reforms and Many Cases Occurred Outside Public View.
Apr 4, 2007
Research Brief
Anatomy of an Insurance Class Action
This research brief describes characteristics of more than 700 class action cases against large U.S. insurers -- trends in claims, their allegations, and their outcomes -- including the vast majority of cases that never become certified as a class.
Mar 13, 2007
Journal Article
Reducing Medical Malpractice By Targeting Physicians Making Medical Malpractice Payments
Some states use physicians' histories of medical malpractice payments to try to reduce the incidence of medical malpractice (and for other reasons).
Mar 1, 2007
Journal Article
Identifying Malpractice-Prone Physicians
Easily gathered physician characteristics can be helpful in designing targeted quality of care improvement policies.
Mar 1, 2007
Journal Article
The Missing Theory of Variable Selection in the Economic Analysis of Tort Law
The Article argues that the economic analysis of tort law has yet to satisfactorily answer a critical threshold question: which of the many inputs that lead to an accident should be included in a court's liability analysis?
Jan 1, 2007

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RAND Topic:
Tort Law

Research conducted by

Researcher Spotlight

Geoffrey McGovern

Director of Intellectual Property

Geoffrey McGovern is director of Intellectual Property, a senior political scientist at RAND, and a professor of policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. His research has focused on matters of civil justice, statutory compliance, asbestos litigation, national defense, and homeland…
Bethany Saunders-Medina

Policy Analyst

Bethany Saunders-Medina (she/her) is a policy analyst and coordinator for the RAND Institute for Civil Justice (ICJ) and the Kennth R. Feinberg Center for Catastrophic Risk Management and Compensation where she helps manage research portfolios and overall center operations. Her work focuses on…

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