Environmental Accidents: Personal Injury and Public Responsibility

Abstract

In this sweeping indictment of law and social policy regarding accidents, Richard Gaskins charges that the United States has seriously neglected its responsibility to protect public health, safety, and welfare against the hazards of modern industrial environments. The main reason for this neglect, he claims, is the antiquated view perpetuated by the American legal system: that accidents are essentially legal disputes between private individuals. Citing the failure of our judicial system to cope with the recent surge in personal injury and 'mass toxic torts', he contends that the dimensions of the accident problem could not be handled even by a perfect judicial structure. Highly publicized suits involving accidents resulting from vaccines, asbestos, Agent Orange, nuclear power, toxic wastes, defective or dangerous products, and occupational diseases dramatize the need for a better solution. The occasional million-dollar jury award simply underlines the eccentricities of the legal system, which has been aptly characterized as a form of 'lottery'. Unlike earlier treatments of accidents and public policy including economic approaches to tort law, moral philosophy, and policy reform Gaskins provides a critical overview of each position and shows how they relate to one another. He then proposes an entirely different national approach to the emerging problems of environmental accidents, based on distinct but coordinated policies for compensation and prevention. The topic of accidents must be expanded to include not just traumatic injuries but also a larger portion of illness and disability. And because these events are so deeply embedded in modern social, technological, and environmental relations, the responsibility for future accident prevention rests with more vigorous programs for public control. As we are beginning to learn from such problems as acid rain and the 'greenhouse effect', a high-technology environment provides great wealth and convenience, but carries an inevitable toll in personal illness, disability, and long-term ecological problems. Environmental Accidents calls for a recognition of the common hazards encountered daily in the home, workplace, or natural surround, and offers new solutions for handling such threats to ourselves and to future generations. Richard H. Gaskins is Associate Professor in the College at the University of Chicago. He is former Dean of the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research and Director of the Law and Social Policy Program at Bryn Mawr College.