Negligence standards and care levels when damages depend on sales prices

In standard models on negligence rules, due care levels can be used for fine-tuning the care levels of potential injurers, and there are good arguments why care levels should vary among different fields. We extend the analysis of the impact of due care on care actually chosen to situations where damages depend on sales prices. This is the case for many contractual relationships, but also for damages on capital markets which are usually calculated as the difference between share prices paid and share prices after the adverse information becomes public. In a model with errors in court, we show that tighter negligence standards may even reduce care levels chosen by potential injurers under reasonable circumstances. Due to this counter-intuitive effect, negligence standards can hardly be applied for fine-tuning the care levels of potential injurers when damages depend on prices.     

Copyright, continuums and freedom of speech

‘A book may be good for nothing; or there may be onlyone thing in it worth knowing; are we to read it all through?’(Samuel Johnson) This section is dedicated to the review ofideas, articles, books, films and other media. It will includereplies (and rejoinders) to articles, the evaluation of newideas or proposals, and reviews of books and articles both directlyand indirectly related to intellectual property law.

Copyright and Free Speech Comparative and International Analyses ByJonathan Griffiths and Uma Suthersanen, Eds, 2005, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press Price: £80.00, Hardback, ISBN: 0199276048.pp. 426   If one were to summarize this     

The Human Rights Act 1998: research,freedom of speech and academic freedom

This article will consider rights to receive and express information and ideas from the perspective of the researcher, the researched, the researcher's institution and the wider community. It will also consider how the courts will resolve the inevitable conflicts between these rights. It does not address the right to education enshrined in Article 2 of the First Protocol² but rather the other Convention Articles, particularly Article 10, particularly relevant to the conduct of intellectual inquiry. It is intended to underline the potential reach of the Act for all public bodies which seek to be learning organisations, and the consequent need for such bodies to review their practices and procedures before the Act comes into force on 2 October 2000.     

Pandemics,economic freedom,and institutional trade-offs

European Journal of Law and Economics - We argue that institutions are bundles that involve trade-offs in the government’s ability to provide public goods that affect public health. We...     

Medical liability and health care reform

We examine the impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on medical liability and the controversy over whether federal medical reform including a damages cap could make a useful contribution to health care reform. By providing guaranteed access to health care insurance at community rates, the ACA could reduce the problem of under-compensation resulting from damages caps. However, it may also exacerbate the problem of under-claiming in the malpractice system, thereby reducing incentives to invest in loss prevention activities. Shifting losses from liability insurers to health insurers could further undermine the already weak deterrent effect of the medical liability system. Republicans in Congress and physician groups both pushed for the adoption of a federal damages cap as part of health care reform. Physician support for damages caps could be explained by concerns about the insurance cycle and the consequent instability of the market. Our own study presented here suggests that there is greater insurance market stability in states with caps on non-economic damages. Republicans in Congress argued that the enactment of damages caps would reduce aggregate health care costs. The Congressional Budget Office included savings from reduced health care utilization in its estimates of cost savings that would result from the enactment of a federal damages cap. But notwithstanding recent opinions offered by the CBO, it is not clear that caps will significantly reduce health care costs or that any savings will be passed on to consumers. The ACA included funding for state level demonstration projects for promising reforms such as offer and disclosure and health courts, but at this time the benefits of these reforms are also uncertain. There is a need for further studies on these issues.     

Race, religion, and informed consent--lessons from social science.

That minority patients have not figured at all in the literature about informed consent is an egregious omission which this article begins to repair. Moreover, the article demonstrates that by addressing identifiable harms which informed consent law now causes to racial, religious, and ethnic minority patients, the law may also better address many of the concerns legal commentators have been discussing for years with only majority patients in mind. Ironically, the solution to the discrimination felt by the excluded members of society may turn out to provide the remedy for the informed consent doctrine as a whole.