Liability: Perspectives and Policy

The United States has recently witnessed an explosion of personal injury lawsuits involving medical malpractice, unsafe products, and widespread environmental hazards.

Jury awards and out-of-court settlements have escalated in many cases to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

At the same time, premiums for liability insurance have skyrocketed.

As a result, physicians have cut back services and some municipalities and businesses have been denied liability coverage altogether.Some experts claim that only fundamental reform of the nation's civil justice system will end this "insurance crisis." But critics of such wholesale judicial reform contend that the insurance industry has launced a "tort reform" campaign to cover its own past underwriting mistakes.

Liability brings together economists and experts in liability law and the insurance industry to assess the merits of the conflicting positions and to formulate sound public policy.

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