The RAND Institute for Civil Justice has a long history of research and publishing on topics related to terrorism risk insurance and management. The RAND Kenneth R. Feinberg Center for Catastrophic Risk Management and Compensation is building on that legacy and expanding it to include research on managing risks related to natural hazards.
The nation's reliance on computer software to run and manage critical business services has increased dramatically over many decades and only continues to grow. However, software supply chain risks are an important yet overlooked concern. This Perspective presents a set of proposed disclosure rules that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission could implement to help address software supply chain security.
The authors of this Perspective examine how and why policymakers have granted access to workers' compensation benefits to employees who are required to work outside the home during the COVID-19 pandemic. They assess the potential impacts of such access on workers, employers, and insurers, and they pose questions for policymakers to consider when evaluating past policies and crafting new ones to meet future public health emergencies.
The Volkswagen "clean diesel" emission fraud litigation is a prime example of global litigation, a new form of transnational mass litigation. This report uses the Volkswagen litigation to illustrate the features of global litigation and the problems that arise in the resolution of these types of claims across transnational jurisdictions.
Given the closures and other restrictions on business activity during the COVID-19 pandemic, stakeholders have developed proposals for an insurance-based program to provide businesses with resources to maintain payroll and benefits and cover ongoing operating expenses. This report describes the distinguishing features of the most-visible proposals and develops a quantitative model that projects their potential consequences.
The opioid epidemic has claimed the lives of more than 450,000 Americans since 1999. Amid claims that the pharmaceutical industry used misleading tactics to downplay the known harms of prescription opioids, more than 2,000 plaintiffs have joined the largest civil trial in U.S. history: National Prescription Opiate Litigation (MDL 2804). In this symposium, experts discuss the opioid litigation and its effects on the future of mass litigation.
The first doses of newly approved vaccines for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) are slowly rolling out to the public. A RAND virtual event focused on (1) facilitating global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines and (2) preventing liability and compensation concerns from affecting the vaccine supply chain and public uptake of the vaccine.
The Medicare Secondary Payer Act of 1980 and its subsequent amendments led to a delay in the resolution of disputes involving auto accidents of about six months.
This article tests the legal realist theory of judicial behavior, which posits that judges' ideology impacts their legal decisions, but that the law constrains the judges' ability to exercise those preferences.
This article explains a surprising effect of tort liability in the market for prescription drugs: punitive damages shift liability from doctors to drug companies, but not when physician malpractice liability is limited."
The authors examine liability and compensation issues relating to the future distribution and administration of a COVID-19 vaccine. They provide a brief history of how liability and compensation concerns have been addressed in previous public health threats, discuss how the global pandemic might complicate matters of legal immunity, and suggest consideration of appropriate compensation for adverse effects to encourage vaccinations.
This brief examines the health of the wildfire insurance market in two areas in northern and southern California and the projected wildfire risk in these areas through 2100.
This article describes the ways that an energy organization, the regional transmission operator PJM, is preparing for hurricanes during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article has implications for policy makers working to maintain infrastructure resilience to natural hazards during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our results suggest that the savings associated with replacing subsidies with our proposed means-tested subsidy would be $183 million per year if all households in the study area hold NFIP policies, or a savings of approximately $3800 per policy.
The authors describe illustrative instances of human-made disasters in which the potentially responsible party (PRP) offered early assistance to the affected community. The authors also explore the benefits and drawbacks of such assistance in stakeholders' eyes and examine potential approaches that policymakers might want to take in encouraging PRPs to provide early assistance.
Third-party liens have increasingly become an issue in resolving mass litigation events. This is potentially problematic if liens become sufficiently burdensome or costly that potential litigants do not pursue cases. This paper examines the different types of health care liens and trends in prevalence, as well as how liens have changed the landscape of claim resolution.
This study identifies the challenges faced by California residential insurance markets in areas with high wildfire risk. It also examines how climate change is expected to change wildfire risk and the potential implications for insurance markets.
In a consumer society, the procedures for providing compensation to many claimants are very important, especially as litigation becomes more public due to 24/7 news and the Internet. During this May 19, 2017, conference, participants explored issues that affect compensation speed, efficiency, and fairness. These conference proceedings explore stakeholder observations on the changing roles of regulators, the impact of liens, and claim aggregation.
This report reviews various alternatives to relying exclusively on traditional civil litigation to assign responsibility for the human causes of a catastrophe and to determine the types of losses that a designated responsible party must reimburse. It also reviews examples of circumstances in which statutory substitutes for the traditional tort system have been adopted for dealing with at least some of the consequences of widespread harm.
This report examines flood insurance cost in New York City and homeowners' ability to afford it. It makes projections for how changes in flood maps and pricing practices of the National Flood Insurance Program might increase premiums, analyzes the potential consequences of those increases on households and communities, and develops and evaluates several different approaches for assisting households that have difficulty affording flood insurance.
This report aims to help designers of victim compensation programs make decisions that balance fairness to victims, speed of compensation, and size of transaction costs. It does so by highlighting major issues that designers are likely to confront, considering multiple outcomes of design decisions, and recognizing conflicts or trade-offs in pursuing fairness without undue delay or excessive transaction costs.
This perspective examines key issues confronting the private sector in disaster recovery financing, the roles that private-sector entities have played, and where there has been successful integration or leadership of these organizations. It briefly explores challenges that the private sector faces. Given continued data gaps in this field, the authors offer opportunities for research and policy analysis.
Explores the issue of how victim compensation funds (VCFs) impact a victim's likelihood to sue using the tort system. VCFs have become a feature of the policy landscape following high-profile tragedies.
This report recounts the proceedings of a conference to discuss recent RAND research on issues related to the potential reauthorization of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act. This conference brought together stakeholders to not only discuss the varying implications of TRIA's expiration, modification, and extension, but also to frame how it is debated in the halls of Congress and across the country.
Congress enacted the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA) in 2002, in response to terrorism insurance becoming unavailable or extremely costly in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. TRIA is set to expire at the end of 2014, and Congress is considering the appropriate government role in terrorism insurance markets. This policy brief examines how markets for workers' compensation insurance would be affected if TRIA were to expire.
Congress enacted the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA) in response to the terrorism insurance industry contraction after the 9/11 attacks. With TRIA set to expire, this policy brief examines the federal spending implications of TRIA. The authors find that, in the absence of a terrorist attack, TRIA costs taxpayers relatively little, and in the event of an attack comparable to any experienced before, it is expected to save taxpayers money.
