Omission Of Facts Research Articles

Hard Truths: Libel by Implication Doctrine and the Need for a Uniform Standard

Since the inception of the tort of libel, claims against the media have created a tension between the First Amendment’s commitment to a free press and the desire to prevent reputational harm to individuals. Further complicating the issue are cases in which plaintiffs allege that literally true statements are defamatory based on implications created through juxtapositions or omissions of facts. This is known as libel by implication, a tort currently governed by states through a patchwork of varying standards and interpretations. Not only does the lack of uniformity leave journalists without due notice of the law in the jurisdictions they are reporting on, but also it encourages forum shopping by plaintiffs and attacks against the media. A solution is critical: libel by implication claims have become increasingly popular with politicians seeking to dispel criticism — precisely the speech the First Amendment was intended to protect. To best protect crucial reporting in an era of animus towards the press, this Note argues that states need to adopt a uniform standard for governing libel by implication that requires a showing that (1) the implications of the article are false and (2) the journalist acted with actual malice in publishing them. “I imagine it’s no surprise by now that many courts and commentators have complained that defamation law is a ‘quagmire,’ lacks ‘clarity and certainty,’ is ‘overly confusing’ and ‘convoluted,’ leaves courts ‘hopelessly and irretrievably confused,’ and ‘has spawned a morass of case law in which consistency and harmony have long ago disappeared.’” Dallas Morning News, Inc. v. Tatum, 554 S.W.3d 614, 643 (Tex. 2018) (internal citations omitted).

Ensuring America’s Health: The Public Creation of the Corporate Health Care System by Christy Ford Chapin

Reviewed by: Ensuring America’s Health: The Public Creation of the Corporate Health Care System by Christy Ford Chapin Daniel M. Fox Christy Ford Chapin. Ensuring America’s Health: The Public Creation of the Corporate Health Care System. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. xiv + 358 pp. $110.00 (978-1-107-04488-3). Chapin applies the results of considerable research in primary and secondary sources in order to assert and sustain a polemical thesis about the history of health care policy in the United States. She elaborates this thesis in an introduction, seven chapters, and an epilogue. Over the past century, Chapin argues, an “insurance company model” for financing health services has been promoted by leaders of nonprofit and commercial insurance companies and of the medical profession, often allied with hospital executives as well as with powerful policy makers in the executive and legislative branches of the federal government and many states. The implementation of this model has “evaded the correctional forces intrinsic” to both “free enterprise and government control” (p. 156). She regrets that, as a result of this history, the country has missed opportunities—most recently in enacting the Affordable Care Act of 2010—to achieve a “nationalized, universal system [through] a government-managed [End Page 740] plan . . . using regulations and mandates to enfeeble and eventually drive out private coverage” (p. 245). Readers are likely to make diverse judgments about Chapin’s polemic as well as about whether or not it is appropriate for it to dominate a book that its author and eminent academic publisher put forward as a work of peer-reviewed history. This reviewer prefers to contextualize rather than to judge, however. Chapin’s book revives a reformist bias that, between the 1920s and 1960s, influenced considerable scholarship about health care by historians and scholars of economics, political science, public health, and law. The influence of this bias on scholarly publications has been in sharp decline since the 1960s, as a result of changing assumptions about methodology and the relationship between research and advocacy, as well as changes in the sources of funding for research on health services and policy. Instead of judging Chapin’s polemic, I will describe aspects of her research that contribute to the historical literature, limitations to her knowledge of relevant secondary sources, and errors or omissions of facts that are documented by primary sources. Chapin contributes to historical knowledge about several critical episodes in the politics of policy making for health in the United States. These episodes include the failure of the Eisenhower administration to enact a reinsurance program; the rising and then declining influence of the American Medical Association (AMA) on health policy between the 1910s and the 1960s; the history of commercial health insurance between the 1940s and 1970s; and the history of the influence of Blue Cross and Blue Shield organizations on the structure, processes, outcomes, and financing of health care. Nevertheless, Chapin ignores relevant secondary sources on significant issues. A notable example is the extensive literature on the history of federal policy establishing and extending tax expenditures (sometimes called, oversimply, tax exclusions and exemptions) for health insurance as a benefit of employment. Another is the literature about the history of medical education and its relationship to continuity and change in the organization and content of clinical services. Chapin’s numerous errors and omissions include claiming, anachronistically, that “physicians continued to promote erroneous ideas about illness” (p. 13) before most of these ideas had been falsified by scientific research; asserting that “nonprofit foundations . . . funded” (p. 15) the Flexner report of 1910, which was commissioned by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; quoting Ray Lyman Wilbur, an eminent medical school dean (at Stanford), secretary of the Treasury under President Coolidge, and past president of the AMA, as opposing any reform of the organization and financing of care in 1924 (pp. 21–22), when Wilbur became a prominent advocate of prepaid group practice only a few years later; ignoring the refusal, in 1938, of a federal official proposing a national system of universal coverage to negotiate with the AMA about other issues on their list of recommendations (pp. 25–26); and indicting “private interests” for defeating...

Integrity in higher education marketing? A typology of misleading data-based claims in the university prospectus

This paper examines misleading marketing claims in UK university prospectuses. It reviews earlier studies suggesting that the imagery and language of university marketing can be misleading. It considers the use of data and statistics by universities in their advertising – a topic not previously studied. From a sample of UK university prospectuses a typology of misleading data-based marketing claims is proposed, with nine categories: omission of facts and selective reporting; misleading wording; misleading inferences about an attribute; misleading associations between attributes; misleading endorsements; claim-fact discrepancies; falsehoods; carefully crafted comparisons, and claims without a reference point. Because choosing a university is so important to students and because universities aspire to high ethical and scholarly standards, the issues raised by these findings are significant. The two bodies empowered to address this issue in the UK do not take a proactive approach and so it must fall to universities themselves to address the ethical challenges raised by misleading marketing.

Cost with time can yield reliable and relevant financial accounting information

It is generally accepted that one of the key financial accounting problems of the day is how to make financial accounting reports, as tools for corporate accountability and stewardship reporting, both reliable and relevant. Practitioners, rule makers, and academics are struggling with this dilemma that is inherent in historical cost financial statements. This paper suggests that historical cost, transactions- based accounting data is nominally reliable, which is an attribute of relevance, but it can be made timelessly relevant, if data about the precise date and time the nominal amount of the transaction was measured are made available to users. Furthermore, the presumption those company-related accountants and the auditors need to prepare a set of financial statements that they need to make relevant to an unknown set of users, should be abandoned. The valuation algorithm, the processes for making historical cost data relevant to situation-specific decision-making, are the prerogative and, most importantly, the responsibility of the users based on their perceptions of the dynamic, quantum world and their unique needs. The paper develops the logical reasons for the positions taken. It also argues that US-GAAP and the resulting financial statements may lead users of accounting information to allege that the financial statements are fraudulent. It is well-recognized by accountants and users that time, the details of which are currently under-reported, is a material fact related to the significance and usefulness of accounting information. Thus, the omission of facts about when the measurements were made, known to be important to understanding the reported information, may be the basis for the allegation of fraud.

Cour de cassation française 21 février 2001 — l'indifférence du caractère excusable de l'erreur

The decision made on February 21 2001 by the Cour de Cassation establishes the irrelevance of a non-excusable mistake committed by a party when it results from fraud on the part of the other contracting party. The case at hand concerned a buyer who, after having purchased a building and business, claimed the nullity of the sale due to the seller's fraud. However, the Court of first instance had ruled against him as he, in his capacity as a professional, should have informed himself properly. Since he did not do so, his mistake is deemed non-excusable. The Cour de Cassation then qualified this decision as follows. It held that, in general, fraudulent omission of facts, given that it has been well established, always makes the resulting mistake excusable. In other words, a mistake is only non-excusable, and thus cannot lead to the nullity of the contract, as long as it is spontaneous. It is, however, without influence, i.e. excusable, when it becomes neutralised by fraudulent behaviour of the other party. This is a general rule, which applies even in case of fraudulent non-disclosure by one of the parties, which relates to substantial facts for the conclusion of the contract.

On the Problems of Adolescence

In a recent (1962) article in Family Process entitled Adolescent Problems: A Symptom of Family Disorder Nathan Ackerman appears to have two goals: first to point out the characterizing todays adolescents; and second to argue that these are based on family disorganization. There can be no doubt that many of the behavior typical of adolescence are due to faulty family relations and this writer is not taking issue with Dr. Ackerman on this point. However the problems which Ackerman describes as characterizing adolescents are presented with a great deal of distortion and omission of fact. Qualification and revision are necessary if a description of this type is to be accurate. The aim of the present article is to make a more detailed investigation of the facts that Ackerman made with regard to the various problems listed and to analyze more thoroughly the implications of several of the listed problems. (excerpt)

Wallace's “Australasia”

MR. EVERETT appears surprised that he should have to make any corrections in my brief account, in the above-named work, of Borneo and the Philippines, countries in which he has resided and travelled for many years. My surprise is that he has not been able to make far larger and more important corrections. Residents abroad soon acquire a mass of local information, and naturally think that what has been long familiar to themselves must be well known in England, forgetting that books on such subjects are written at long intervals, and when written rarely contain all the information up to date. I am exceedingly thankful for any additional facts or corrections for a new edition of the book, but I do not acknowledge to “errors” in the omission of facts which were not to be found in any books in English libraries at the time I wrote. I will make a few observations on the chief points in Mr. Everett's letter.