Much has been written about the relationship between high medical expenses and the likelihood of filing for bankruptcy, but the relationship between receiving a cancer diagnosis and filing for bankruptcy is less well understood. We estimated the incidence and relative risk of bankruptcy for people age twenty-one or older diagnosed with cancer compared to people the same age without cancer by co...

No tort reform has more potential to improve the quality of medical care and to reduce the frequency of patient injuries than exclusive hospital enterprise liability. Hospital enterprise liability would make hospitals liable for all patient injuries occurring in the hospital that are the product of provider negligence, regardless of the independent contractor status of the providers. In its “ex...

We document the distortionary effects of accounting-based regulation on reported earnings. In India only firms with negative book value of equity (networth) can seek bankruptcy protection. Using a novel dataset of bankrupt firms from India, we show that firms manage earnings downward to seek bankruptcy protection. Strengthening creditor rights reduces downward earnings management among non-grou...

Over the last decade, the topic of bankruptcy has been an object of growing concern. In Canada, the number of business bankruptcies under the Bankruptcy Act has risen significantly since the beginning of the 1980s. From 6,595 in 1980, the number of bankruptcies rose to 8,664 in 1989, to 14,317 in 1992 to finally settle at 11,810 in 1994.1 In addition, a large but uncertain number of business fa...

This paper characterizes the optimal bankruptcy exemption for risk averse borrowers who use unsecured contracts but have the possibility of defaulting. It provides a novel general formula — which holds in a wide variety of environments — for the optimal exemption as a function of a few observable sufficient statistics. Knowledge of borrowers’ leverage, the sensitivity of the interest rate sched...

recovery. Rules of tort liability mediate between the victim's need for recompense and the defendant's right to remain free from arbitrarily imposed obligation. Although sensational cases involving large recoveries tend to generate the greatest alarm, the magnitude of damages in a particular case is actually far less important than the availability of any damages in similar cases. Potential tor...

54 ■ For The Defense ■ April 2017 ■ Michael Crist is a partner at DLD Lawyers with over 27 years of experience in product liability, toxic tort, and insurance defense litigation. He has been a member of trial teams in multiple states and has served as national coordinating and trial counsel. Mr. Crist has presented seminars and authored articles on a variety of topics and is a member of DRI. Ma...

1 An employee injured at work in the UK is able to claim not only no-fault social security benefit from the state under the industrial injuries compensation scheme, but also damages from the employer if liability in tort can be established. Use of one system of compensation does not lead to exclusion from the other; there is no ‘employer privilege’ preventing an employee claiming from both work...

The main proposal in the current Congress with respect to medical malpractice is H.R. 30841 (the Moore-Gephardt bill), which was widely discussed when introduced in the 98th Congress as H.R. 5400.2 The bill merits support because it cuts through the Gordian knot of tort reform, motivating medical providers to offer reasonable compensation for negligently injured patients in exchange for patient...

Is there a connection between state-law tort reform and the explosive growth of U.S. intellectual property (IP) litigation? The literature has established that the number of tort claims in states with tort reform has gone down. How do personal injury (PI) plaintiff lawyers deal with the decrease in the demand for their services? Could a significant number of them end up shifting their practice ...