The Measure Of Injury

""This book asks important questions about the tort system. Tort law is largely taught and described from a doctrinal perspective that makes no attempt to see how it is actualy working on the ground. This book assesses how the tort system fares in operation by examining how race and gender influence court decisions in torts cases. A promising direction for scholarship on the tort system.""--BOOK JACKET.

A Measure of Malpractice tells the story and presents the results of the Harvard Medical Practice Study, the largest and most comprehensive investigation ever undertaken of the performance of the medical malpractice system. The Harvard study was commissioned by the government of New York in 1986, in the midst of a malpractice crisis that had driven insurance premiums for surgeons and obstetricians in New York City to nearly $200,000 a year. The Harvard-based team of doctors, lawyers, economists, and statisticians set out to investigate what was actually happening to patients in hospitals and to doctors in courtrooms, launching a far more informed debate about the future of medical liability in the 1990s. Careful analysis of the medical records of 30,000 patients hospitalized in 1984 showed that approximately one in twenty-five patients suffered a disabling medical injury, one quarter of these as a result of the negligence of a doctor or other provider. After assembling all the malpractice claims filed in New York State since 1975, the authors found that just one in eight patients who had been victims of negligence actually filed a malpractice claim, and more than two-thirds of these claims were filed by the wrong patients. The study team then interviewed injured patients in the sample to discover the actual financial loss they had experienced: the key finding was that for roughly the same dollar amount now being spent on a tort system that compensates only a handful of victims, it would be possible to fund comprehensive disability insurance for all patients significantly disabled by a medical accident. The authors, who came to the project from very different perspectives about the present malpractice system, are now in agreement about the value of a new model of medical liability. Rather than merely tinker with the current system which fixes primary legal responsibility on individual doctors who can be proved medically negligent, legislatures should encourage health care organizations to take responsibility for the financial losses of all patients injured in their care.

The Measure of Injury is an intellectual tour de force of gender and race-based jurisprudence applied to critical issues in the law of torts. In this volume, Martha Chamallas and Jennifer B. Wriggins shed light on numerous issues related to law governing accidents and intentional injuries, while offering insights into the American tort system and the challenges it faces.Chamallas and Wriggins draw upon the feminist theory, critical race theory, and general critical theory in analyzing tort doctrines and evaluating potential reforms. The authors explore how racial perceptions can distort even seemingly neutral inquiries, such as those related to factual causation. In their review of tort precedent related to race and gender, the authors explore a number of important historical topics: the doctrine of coverture, the “nervous-shock” cases, wrongful-death cases, and wrongful-birth cases. Viewed in all of its complexity, the authors' argument seems to be that matters of race should be taken into account by tort law when cognizance will benefit persons who are members of classes that have historically suffered from discrimination, but not otherwise. To the extent that the author's arguments are found to be persuasive, The Measure of Inquiry may play a key role in revolutionizing the compensation of intentional injuries and accidents.

Combining archival research, critical theory, and gender- and disability-analysis, Nate Holdren argues that Progressive Era reform to employee injury law created new employment discrimination against disabled people and a new injury culture that treated employees and their injuries instrumentally.

A large body of research has established a causal relationship between experiences of racial discrimination and adverse effects on mental and physical health. In Measuring the Effects of Racism, Robert T. Carter and Alex L. Pieterse offer a manual for mental health professionals on how to understand, assess, and treat the effects of racism as a psychological injury. Carter and Pieterse provide guidance on how to recognize the psychological effects of racism and racial discrimination. They propose an approach to understanding racism that connects particular experiences and incidents with a person’s individual psychological and emotional response. They detail how to evaluate the specific effects of race-based encounters that produce psychological distress and possibly impairment or trauma. Carter and Pieterse outline therapeutic interventions for use with individuals and groups who have experienced racial trauma, and they draw attention to the importance of racial awareness for practitioners. The book features a racial-trauma assessment toolkit, including a race-based traumatic-stress symptoms scale and interview schedule. Useful for both scholars and practitioners, including social workers, educators, and counselors, Measuring the Effects of Racism offers a new framework of race-based traumatic stress that helps legitimize psychological reactions to experiences of racism.

Excerpt from A Treatise on the Law of the Measure of Damages for Personal Injuries: Including Suggestions on Pleading, Evidence, and Province of Court and Jury, Applicable to the Trial of This Class of Cases There are certain recognized elements of damages which enter into every personal injury, and which, when supported by proper evidence, become the basis of compensation. Some one or more of these elements must appear, in some tangible form, and be sustained by proof before the injured person is entitled to recover any damages. Every fact showing the natural effect of the injury, as a proximate result thereof, upon the body or mind is competent to be considered by the tribunal whose duty it shall be to award the damages. These elements, and the principles of law applicable thereto, have been arranged and classified under appropriate subjects, and all the leading authorities which in any way discuss the questions relating to them have been cited. So far as practical the principal elements of damages have been considered by themselves in separate chapters as damages for expenses, time lost, physical pain and suffering, and diminished earning capacity. Damages sustained by parent and child for an injury to the child, by husband and wife for an injury to the wife, for sickness developed and disease aggravated, for death by wrongful act, and exemplary damages have also been considered and discussed in like manner. With the present generation there has come a new question of law. It is the subject of mental suffering and the right to recover damages therefor. It is an innovation upon the common law, and may properly be called a child of this progressive age. There is no other recent question which has been so thoroughly examined and discussed by the courts. The authorities are diametrically opposed to each other and are nearly evenly divided upon it, with a growing tendency in its favor. It is impossible to reconcile them and no attempt has been made to do so. The leading authorities have been cited and quoted Wherever this question has been carefully considerei in all its phases. The reason for this was to furnish the arguments pro and can, and to give the views of the courts as expressed by them, leaving their application as might be deemed proper. At the same time the author has not failed to express his own conclusions upon the same questions. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1874.