Professor Mark J. Perry's Blog for Economics and Finance
More than 2,000 MD license applications await processing at the Texas Medical Board in Austin, including 350 Tennessee doctors who have applied to move their practices to Texas.
Dr. Mark J. Perry is a professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan. Perry holds two graduate degrees in economics (M.A. and Ph.D.) from George Mason University near Washington, D.C. In addition, he holds an MBA degree in finance from the Curtis L. Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. In addition to a faculty appointment at the University of Michigan-Flint, Perry is also a visiting scholar at The American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.
5 Comments:
I guess I have to be difficult but . . .
How is tort reform different than price control? Isn't "capping lawsuits" the same thing as "capping gas prices."
If a free market can work for gasoline, shouldn't it work for lawsuits. Or, do we need regulation to solve problems when they arise in the free-market system?
From The Cato Institute: "Too often, today’s tort law assigns liability without fault, without causation, even without real damages. Most people agree that modern tort law discourages personal responsibility, yet encouraging responsible behavior was traditionally one of tort law’s principal aims. As individuals are able to shift the costs of their behavior to others, we have seen an explosion of litigation, boundless punitive damage awards, and unjustified class actions. The result is increased costs for everything and everybody. That, in a nutshell, is the problem."
The legal system has become so distorted, and reflect outcomes that are not market-driven, so perhaps caps on damage awards are a second-best solution.
Thanks. The last sentence really makes sense to me. It's as if you need a regulation to deregulate a regulation.
I don't know about generalities or the physicians in the medical field, but in the specific tort cases we are studying this semester I'm surprised at how often the "little guy" loses. For example, a farmer loses his case against Standard Oil because he can’t prove the gas station next door contaminated his crop, but Alaska did not have any trouble winning against Exxon in the Valdez case. The causation bar seemed awfully high in the Brock Bendectin case against Dow. The jury verdict was thrown out because the epidemiological tests were deemed statistically insignificant. I guess whoever has the best “expert” wins, so tort reform probably is necessary because the juries comprised of everyday people don’t understand such technicalities.
Hello walt g.:
Well sir I live across the Mississippi river from Madison county in Illinois one of the nation's worst counties to be sued in if one is a company...
I would say that under, 'normal' circumstances your comment about free markets in the capping of lawsuits would or could be on the money...
The problem that I've noted from my own experience is that the market place is already skewed by the selection of who sits on a jury...
When the abysmally ignorant (mostly the jurors) are allowed to pass judgement on something is it any suprise the results are what they are?
Juandos,
You have to be ignorant of the case to sit on a jury. If you know anything about it you are usually, but not always, disqualified. You are supposed to judge only the facts presented to you.
If you are implying that jurors are stupid, that’s another discussion. After all, they are our peers, so. . . .
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