Abstract
This is the introductory Chapter 1 of Prue Vines & Arno Akkermans (Eds.) Unexpected Consequences of Compensation Law, Oxford, Hart Publishing, 2020 (preprint). This book explores the performance of compensation law in addressing the needs of the injured. Compensation procedure can be dangerous to your health and may fail to compensate without aggravation/creating other problems. This book takes a refreshing and insightful approach to the law of compensation considering, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the actual effect of compensation law on people seeking compensation. Tort law, workers' compensation, medical law, industrial injury law and other schemes are examined and unintended consequences for injured people are considered. These include ongoing physical and mental illness, failure to rehabilitate, the impact on social security entitlements, medical care as well as the impact on those who serve – the lawyers, administrators, medical practitioners etc. All are explored in this timely and fascinating book. The contributors include lawyers, psychologists, and medical practitioners from multiple jurisdictions including Australia, the Netherlands, Canada, Italy and the UK. This introductory Chapter provides an introduction and an overview of the content of the book.
Highlights
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Compensation law concerns the legal recognition of wrongs which cause harm and the giving of compensatory awards in recognition of the wrong and the harm
Compensation law may encompass a range of causes of action and a large range of systems, all of which are aimed at compensating persons for their harms
Summary
Compensation law concerns the legal recognition of wrongs which cause harm and the giving of compensatory awards in recognition of the wrong and the harm. We are beginning to see the development of systematic empirical work evaluating the ‘side-effects’ of compensation law coming from legal academics and from academics in medicine, epidemiology, psychology and sociology One of these new interdisciplinary research fields is Compensation Health Research, studying the anti-therapeutic effects of legal arrangements and procedures on the victims of accidents who have suffered injury. This book arose out of a symposium held at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia in March 2018 It included a range of researchers from the various fields of law, medicine, epidemiology, psychology and sociology and included Australian, Dutch and Italian participants, and research carried out in those countries and in the USA and New Zealand. Much of the discussion concerns issues which are common to most common law jurisdictions, and to civil law jurisdictions
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