Damages

About: Damages is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 9365 publications have been published within this topic receiving 89750 citations. The topic is also known as: compensation award.

First Do No Harm?: Tort Reform and Birth Outcomes

Abstract: We examine the impact of tort reforms using U.S. birth records for 1989-2001. We make four contributions: First, we develop a model that analyzes the incentives created by specific tort reforms. Second, we assemble new data on tort reform. Third, we examine a range of outcomes. Finally, we allow for differential effects by demographic/risk group. We find that reforms of the "deep pockets rule" reduce complications of labor and C-sections, while caps on noneconomic damages increase them. Our results demonstrate there are important interactions between incentives created by tort law and other incentives facing physicians.

Federal Antitrust Policy: The Law of Competition and Its Practice

Abstract: Policy and Measurement: Basic Economics of Antitrust; History and Ideology in Antitrust Policy; Market Power and Market Definition; The Substance of Antitrust: Antitrust Policy Toward Collusion and Oligopoly; Joint Ventures of Competitors, Concerted Refusals, Patent Licensing, and Rule of Reason; Exclusionary Practices and the Dominant Firm: Basic Doctrine of Monopolization and Attempt; Exclusionary Practices in Monopolization and Attempt Cases; Predatory Pricing; Vertical Integration and Vertical Mergers; Tie-Ins, Reciprocity, Exclusive Dealing and the Franchise Contract; Intrabrand Restraints on Distribution; Mergers of Competitors; Conglomerate Mergers; Price Discrimination and the Robinson-Patman Act; Antitrust as a Regulatory Institution: Public Enforcement of the Federal Antitrust Laws; Private Enforcement; Damages; Antitrust and the Process of Democratic Government; Antitrust and Federal Regulatory Policy; Antitrust Federalism and the State Action Doctrine; Reach of the Federal Antitrust Laws.

Dollars and Death

Abstract: Administrative regulations and tort law both impose controls on activities that cause mortality risks, but they do so in puzzlingly different ways. Under a relatively new and still-controversial procedure, administrative regulations rely on a fixed value of a statistical life representing the hedonic loss from death. Under much older law, tort law in most states excludes hedonic loss from the calculation of damages, and instead focuses on loss of income, which regulatory policy ignores. Regulatory policy also disregards losses to dependents; tort law usually allows dependents to recover for loss of support. Regulatory policy generally treats the loss of the life of a child as equivalent to the loss of the life of an adult; tort law usually treats the loss of the life of a child as less valuable. Regulatory policy implicitly values foreigners as equal to Americans; tort law does not. We argue that both areas of law make serious mistakes in valuing life and that each should learn from the other. Regulatory policy properly focuses on hedonic loss from death, and tort law should adopt this approach. But regulatory policy should imitate tort law's individualized approach to valuing the loss from death, including its inclusion of losses to dependents. If these changes were made, tort awards would be more uniform and predictable, and regulations would be less uniform and more stringent. In addition, average tort damages for wrongful death would be at least twice as high as they are today. With respect to dollar judgments for mortality risks, a pervasive issue is how to combine accuracy with administrability and predictability; both bodies of law could do far better on this score.

Wrongful life, procreative responsibility, and the significance of harm

Abstract: A wrongful life suit is an unusual civil suit brought by a child (typically a congenitally disabled child)1 who seeks damages for burdens he suffers that result from his creation Typically, the child charges that he has been born into an unwanted or miserable life2 These suits offer the prospect of financial relief for some disabled or neglected children and have some theoretical advantages over alternative causes of action3 But they have had only mixed, mostly negative, success4 They have, however, spurred considerable philosophical interest5 This attention, though, has been primarily focused on issues about the coherence of complaining about one’s existence or its essential conditions These suits also raise important, but less well-probed, philosophical questions about the morality of procreation and, more generally, about the moral significance of imposed, but not consented to, conditions that deliver both significant harms and benefits

Contracts of Adhesion-Some Thoughts About Freedom of Contract

Abstract: WAith the development of a free enterprise system based on an unheard of division of labor, capitalistic society needed a highly elastic legal institution to safeguard the exchange of goods and services on the market. Common law lawyers, responding to this social need, transformed "contract" from the clumsy institution that it was in the sixteenth century into a tool of almost unlimited usefulness and pliability. Contract thus became the indispensable instrument of the enterpriser, enabling him to go about his affairs in a rational way. Rational behavior within the context of our culture is only possible if agreements will be respected. It requires that reasonable expectations created by promises receive the protection of the law or else we will suffer the fate of Montesquieu's Troglodytes, who perished because they did not fulfill their promises. This idea permeates our whole law of contracts, the doctrines dealing with their formation, performance, impossibility and damages. Under a free enterprise system rationality of the law of contracts has still another aspect.1 To keep pace with the constant widening of the market the legal system has to place at the disposal of the members of the community an ever increasing number of typical business transactions and regulate their consequences. But the law cannot possibly anticipate the content of an infinite number of atypical transactions into which members of the community may need to enter. Society, therefore, has to give the parties freedom of contract; to accommodate the business community the ceremony necessary to vouch for the deliberate nature of a transaction has to be reduced to the absolute minimum. Furthermore, the rules of the common law of contract have to remain Jus dispositivum-to use the phrase of the Romans; that is, their application has to depend on the intention of the parties or on their neglect to rule otherwise. (If parties to a contract have failed to regulate its consequences in their own way, they will be supposed to have intended the consequences envisaged by the common law.) Beyond that the law cannot go. It has to delegate legislation to the contracting parties. As far as they are concerned, the law of contract has to be of their own making.