Damages In Personal Injury Cases Research Articles

APF Gold Medal Award for Impact in Psychology: Lenore E. Walker.

The APF Gold Medal for Impact in Psychology recognizes Lenore E. Walker for her groundbreaking work with a particularly vulnerable population, those with a syndrome she named Battered Woman Syndrome (BWS). Lenore E. Walker's work has had a transformational impact in psychology, in the courts, in public policy, and in the lives of countless women over a period of more than 40 years. BWS is accepted as a criminal defense in federal court and all state courts and may be raised as 'state of mind' for damages in personal injury cases and in family courts. The central tenet of Dr. Walker's contributions is that the victims of trauma from familial and intimate partner violence, abuse, and degradation all share experiencing common trauma symptoms that may need effective trauma-specific assessment and treatment. Her work has impacted the lives of hundreds of thousands of abused women and their families and continues to be used and expanded upon today. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The Impact of Using a Race-Neutral Model to Predict the Educational Attainment and Income of a Child in Personal Injury Litigation

Abstract This paper examines the impact of using a model that excludes race and ethnicity on predicted educational attainment and income of a child in a personal injury legal matter. We use the updated ordered probit models with and without race and ethnic variables from Spizman and Kane (2020) and compare the earning capacity losses of a minor child based on each one. We perform this calculation for more than 3,000 combinations of the right-hand side variables for males and females separately, with more than 1,000 combinations each for White, Black, and Hispanic individuals. We find wide variation within each racial and ethnic group, with some subgroups benefiting and others being adversely impacted. The results of our analyses provide guidance to policymakers who might be interested in the real-world outcomes associated with legislation requiring that race and ethnicity not be considered when estimating damages in personal injury cases.

Assessment of Liability and Damages in Personal Injury Cases Arising From Accidents in Overseas Hotels

Assessment of Liability and Damages in Personal Injury Cases Arising From Accidents in Overseas Hotels

Pain and Suffering Damages in Personal Injury Cases: An Empirical Study

Many jurisdictions award pain and suffering damages, yet it is difficult for judges or juries to quantify pain. Several jurisdictions, such as California, cap pain and suffering damages or other noneconomic damages, and legal scholars have proposed ways to control such damages. Reforms and proposals, however, have been based on limited empirical evidence. It remains an open question whether components of economic damages explain pain and suffering damages. This study employs a unique dataset of Taiwan district court cases and uses detailed information on the components of pecuniary damages. Pain and suffering damages highly correlate with the plaintiff's medical expenses, level of injury, and the amount requested by the plaintiff. The association with the amount requested by the plaintiff persists when one accounts for the likely quantifiable influences on pain and suffering damages, evidence of a possible anchoring effect. The strong correlation between economic damages and noneconomic damages persists in a large U.S. dataset of judge and jury trials, in which the noneconomic fraction of total damages is no greater than the pain and suffering fraction of total damages in Taiwan. Judges and juries consistently produce coherent patterns of noneconomic damages.

Pain and Suffering Damages in Personal Injury Cases: An Empirical Study

Many jurisdictions award pain and suffering damages, yet it is difficult for judges or juries to quantify pain. Several jurisdictions, such as California, cap pain and suffering damages or other noneconomic damages, and legal scholars have proposed ways to control such damages. Reforms and proposals, however, have been based on limited empirical evidence. It remains an open question whether components of economic damages explain pain and suffering damages. This study employs a unique data set of Taiwan district court cases and uses detailed information on the components of pecuniary damages. Pain and suffering damages highly correlate with the plaintiff’s medical expenses, level of injury, and the amount requested by the plaintiff. The association with the amount requested by the plaintiff persists when one accounts for the likely quantifiable influences on pain and suffering damages, evidence of a possible anchoring effect. The strong correlation between economic damages and noneconomic damages persists in a large U.S. dataset of judge and jury trials, in which the noneconomic fraction of total damages is no greater than the pain and suffering fraction of total damages in Taiwan. Judges and juries consistently produce coherent patterns of noneconomic damages.

Hedonic Damages, Hedonic Adaptation, and Disability

This article contributes to the broad debate over adaptive preferences in law, economics, and political philosophy by addressing an important ongoing controversy in tort law. Hedonic damages compensate for the lost enjoyment of life that results from a tortious injury. Lawyers seeking hedonic damages in personal injury cases emphasize their clients' new status as compromised and damaged persons, and courts frequently uphold jury verdicts awarding hedonic damages to individuals who experienced disabling injuries based on a view that disability necessarily limits one's enjoyment of life. This view is consonant with a general societal understanding of disability as a tragedy and of people with disabilities as natural objects of pity. But a rich psychological literature demonstrates that disability does not inherently limit enjoyment of life to the degree that these courts suggest. Rather, people who experience disabling injuries tend to adapt to their disabilities. To be sure, the views of people with disabilities about their own quality of life are classic adaptive preferences. Accordingly, one might suggest that the legal system should disregard those views. But we argue that the legal system goes wrong by so devaluing the experience of people with disabilities. When courts award damages based on the (nondisabled person's) view that disability is tragic, they distract attention from the societal choices and stigmas that attach disadvantage to disability; they also make it harder for people with disabilities to make hedonic adjustments to their conditions. For deterrence and compensation reasons, people who experience disabling injuries should be able to recover for their physical pain; for medical expenses and the cost of assistive technology and personal assistance; for the opportunities society denies people with their conditions; and for the effects of social stigma. But they should not recover for any purported effect of disability on the enjoyment of life.

Medical help-seeking by motor vehicle accident claimants.

The assessment of general psychiatric damages in personal injury cases is partly determined by evidence that the claimant has attempted to mitigate their losses by seeking medical help. However, there is no evidence that seeking medical help for a psychiatric injury is typical behaviour. The general practice consultation behaviour of 100 claimants with chronic physical and psychiatric injury with an onset at the time of a motor vehicle accident, was assessed over a 12-month period after the injury. GP consultations for physical and psychiatric symptoms were compared. At 12 months after the accident 53 (95% CI 42.7, 63.3) had consulted their GP with psychiatric symptoms and 94 (95% CI 88.8, 99.2) had consulted their GP with physical symptoms. Neither the sex, age or a pre-accident history of help-seeking for psychological symptoms was significantly predictive of post-accident help seeking for psychiatric injury. The results from this study provide information about the weight that should be given to medical help-seeking as a factor in assessing the value of claims for general psychiatric damages in personal injury cases.

Instructing jurors on general damages in personal injury cases: Problems and possibilities.

Instructing jurors on general damages in personal injury cases: Problems and possibilities.

Instructing jurors on general damages in personal injury cases: Problems and possibilities.

Instructing jurors on general damages in personal injury cases: Problems and possibilities.

A Tortfeasor's Lot is not a Happy One?

In recent years there has been considerable emphasis on preventing a plaintiff receiving compensation for the same injury from two different sources when awarding damages in personal injury cases at the expense of the tortfeasor.1 This problem of double recovery is raised in deciding whether a plaintiff should receive damages for the value of caring services rendered to her gratuitously by a third party. It can be argued that if the plaintiff is allowed to recover she receives both the care and the cost of the care, the latter being a benefit to the plaintiff at the expense of the tortfeasor. However, in Donnelly v Joyce2 and Cunningham v Harrison,3 the Court of Appeal accepted that such damages could be recovered. In Hunt v Severs,4 the House of Lords considered whether recovery should be allowed where the voluntary services were provided by the tortfeasor rather than a third party. In rejecting the plaintiff's claim, the House of Lords recategorised the legal basis on which any plaintiff can recover for the value of gratuitously provided services and used this new 'trust' basis to deny recovery on the facts. However, the extent to which the plaintiff would have been overcompensated if recovery had been allowed, whether if such overcompensated existed it was justified and whether the imposition of a trust as a means for compensating voluntary providers of care is workable, receive inadequate treatment.

The Effects Of Intra-Period Payments On Award Calculations

Abstract No abstract available.

Book Review: Judicial Studies Board Guidelines for the Assessment of General Damages in Personal Injury Cases

Book Review: Judicial Studies Board Guidelines for the Assessment of General Damages in Personal Injury Cases

Successive Causes and the Quantum of Damages in Personal Injury Cases

Successive Causes and the Quantum of Damages in Personal Injury Cases

The High Price of Sympathy: Damages for Personal Injuries

RECENT cases in England,' Australia,2 and Canada' have raised one of the most vexing problems of the Law of Torts: the measure of general damages in personal injury cases where the victim has been rendered permanently unconscious. Only the English and Australian courts seem vexed by it, however, the Supreme Court of Canada having found it pretty straightforward. Briefly, the problem breaks down into the following issues: (1) to what extent should intangible factors such as pain and suffering, shortened expectation of life and loss of the amenities of life play a part in the assessment, and (2) on what basis should the economic element of lost earning capacity be calculated? These are significant policy issues. The Australian judges recognized them as such and after considerable discourse rejected the prevailing English point of view by a majority of four to one. The English judges saw that the prevailing viewpoint on the first issue left much to be desired but, with one dissent, could not see their way clear to rejecting it. The Supreme Court of Canada, however, was able to treat it as the merest question of mathematics, accepting an earlier decision of a divided House of Lords4 without question and endorsing the unanimous view of the Ontario Court of Appeal' without discussion. It is submitted that the Canadian point of view is not quite so clearly correct as the manner of the decision might suggest.