Civil Justice

As a lawful form of self-help, state tort law is the vehiele through which individual citizens protect their persons and property from invasion by private sector actors. The possibility that a jury composed of twelve representatives of the eommunity will hold powerful corporations accountable for violating standards of conduct articulated by common law courts provides a strong incentive to act responsibly and some assurance to victims that their wrongs will be redressed.  

During the Public Interest Era, the American Law Institute (ALI), a 3,000-member self-perpetuating body of judges, lawyers, and law professors, recommended a strict products liability regime in its influential Restatement (Second) of Torts, under which manufactures of defective products that were unreasonably dangerous would be held strictly liable without regard to fault. By 1976, the courts in 41 states had adopted some form of strict products liability. 

Zyprexa. Eli Lilly agreed to pay 1.2 billion to settle more than 28,500 cases brought by patients claiming that it knew that its antipsychotic drug Zyprexa could cause obesity and diabetes, but failed to warn doctors of that fact as they preseribed it for treating many forms of dementia. The drug remains on the market.  

Marquis Defibrillators. Medtronie Ine. paid 114.1 million to settle most of the 2,682 consolidated federal elaims in which the plaintiffs alleged that it knew that its Marquis line of implantable cardiac defibrillators were capable of shorting out instead of delivering a life-preserving shock to the heart. The eompany recalled the defective defibrillators, but continues to market a newer version, and many of the older products remain in the bodies of patients.  

Metrolink Crash. The Los Angeles eommuter railroad Metrolink entered into a 200 million settlement with victims of a collision between a freight train and a commuter train that occurred while the engineer was busily texting messages to admirers. At the time, FRA did not prohibit such texting.  

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George Eads and Peter Reuter, Designating Safer Products Gorporate Responses to Product Liability Law and Regulation, The Rand Corporation Institute for Civil justice, Santa Monica, CA, 1983. 

One characteristic of the civil justice system is that it is decentralized Different courts can and do come to different conclusions. In 2002, in the case of Cincinnati v. Beretta the Ohio State Supreme Court ruled that plaintiffs had adequately demonstrated that the availability of guns to criminals caused by negligent marketing represented a substantial danger to the community—a major public nuisance. 

Peterson, M. A., Civil Justice in the 1980s Trends in Jury Trials and Verdicts in California and Cook County (Santa Monica, CA The Rand Corporation, 1987). 

Reuter, P., The Economic Consequences of Expanded Corporate Liability An Exploratory Study, The Rand Corporation, The Institute for Civil Justice, Santa Monica, CA. N-2807 -ICJ, November 1988. 

Forensic science is a hybrid, applied science encompassing any of the natural, engineering, or medical sciences that may be used in analysis for the administration of criminal or civil justice. Criminalistics is a branch of forensic science. Although variously defined, it is generally thought of as utilizing the physical sciences, especially chemistry, physics, and biology to characterize, identify, compare, and individualize items of physical evidence. The forensic scientist may be a fulltime employee of a municipal, state, federal, or private laboratory, or a specialist from an academic or industrial laboratory, who is called upon to conduct forensic examinations and provide expert testimony in courts of law. 

Important changes to the Civil Justice System have been implemented following the Woolf Report Access to Justice (1996). The objectives include... 

Civil Procedures Rules 1998 (emerging from the Access to Civil Justice Report by Lord Woolf - known as the Woolf Reforms), The Stationery Office, London (1998)... 

Reforms to the civil claims procedures proposed by Lord Woolf were adopted on 26 April 1999. These were designed to ensure that courts deal with claims justly and quickly, and the resulting Civil Procedure Rules constitute probably the most far-reaching single set of changes in the administration of civil justice. At the time of writing it remains to be seen what effect the introduction of the Human Rights Act will have on the reforms and the system as a whole. 

Hard-pressed by dwindling budgets, the mainstream media was on the lookout for easily digested capsules of information that did not require much independent verification. The tort reformers facile portrayals of the civil justice system were specifically crafted to meet this need. ... 

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