An Injury Law Constitution presents a novel thesis that embraces leading features of the American law of injuries. The book argues that the body of law that Americans have developed concerning responsibility for injuries and prevention of injuries has some of the qualities of a constitution - a fundamental set of principles that govern relations between human persons and between individual persons and corporate and governmental institutions. This 'injury law constitution' includes tort law, legislative compensation systems like workers compensation, and the many statutes that regulate safety of activities and products including drugs, medical devices, automobile design, and pesticides. Professor Shapo's analysis, into which he weaves the history of these systems of law, is then linked to the unique compensation plan devised for the victims of the September 11th attacks. Professor Shapo writes about how our injury law reflects deeply held views in American society on risk and injury, indicating how the injury law constitution is a guide to the question of what it means to be an American. Setting aside easy academic formulas, An Injury Law Constitution captures the reality of how people respond to injury risks in functional contexts involving diverse activities and products.

Many workers in medicine, healthcare administration, science, and technology, no matter how strong their academic degrees or how distinguished their careers, find themselves baffled, frustrated, and even angered by their encounters with the law. Some of those occasions may lead to the need for a lawyer. But many of the bafflements and frustrations arise from ignorance about what the law is, including how it operates. Over more than a half century of inquiry into the relations between law and science, and through numerous conversations with physicians, scientists, and healthcare professionals whose work rests on technological development, the author realized that they often desire more knowledge about the operations of the law and the legal system. This book seeks to provide basic knowledge about the law in realms where these professionals often encounter it, primarily in areas where activities pose risks of personal injury. This book discusses two basic types of law: civil litigation and other remedies afforded to persons who ascribe injuries to the conduct or product of others, and direct regulation by the government of the levels of safety in those areas. Principal practical applications of this knowledge lie in ways to minimize risk, both in the primary sense and in efforts to avoid litigation over injuries, and in how to present arguments about policy to government officials who write laws and regulations.

A proliferation of lawsuits involving sport utility vehicles, defective tires, medical devices and drugs, and asbestos abounds. Public attention to products liability cases is at an all-time high, and awards routinely run into the millions of dollars. When developing a strategy in this high stakes world, attorneys can't afford to have anything other than the best information and insight into this evolving area of law. Lawyers need practical tools to assess a products liability case's potential and build their approach, and Shapo on the Law of Products Liability provides the tools to give you the winning edge. Through a holistic analysis of the law and its principal developments as witnessed in hundreds of cases, this treatise gives litigators a wide variety of perspectives on potential strategies, and the tools to support those strategies with persuasive arguments. This authoritative two-volume work will enable you to: Assess products liability case potential and build sound litigation strategies Dig deep into products liability law to build creative approaches to litigation Craft a winning case and reap the greatest reward for your clients Find the tools and information to support strategies with persuasive arguments Both federal and state courts contribute a rich mix of decisions to products liability law, which covers both consumer products and occupational hazards. This indispensable resource for the products liability practitioner helps you prepare your case. Is the product defective? Who is liable? What is the manufacturer's responsibility? Who can be sued? What kind of awards may be realized? How might this be defended? Shapo on the Law of Products Liability also includes coverage of: Asbestos litigation Chinese drywall Food and drug Medical devices Design/manufacturing defects claims Punitive damages Discovery rule Up to date analysis and commentary History and background on products liability law Damages Advertising material Packaging Marshall S. Shapo, the Frederic P. Vose Professor at Northwestern University School of Law, is a nationally recognized authority on torts and products liability law.

A woman terrified by the threats of a jilted suitor is denied police protection. A workman collapses on the job and the employer is slow to help him. A bully in a bar begins to carry out threats of serious injury to a customer, after the bartender’s lackadaisical response. Springing from varied areas of human activity, such cases occupy an important area of the legal battleground called modern tort law. They also provide the basis for a fascinating legal analysis by Marshall S. Shapo. Tort law is an important social mediator of events surrounding personal injuries. It impinges on many other areas of the law—those dealing with crime, constitutional protections against government officials and agencies, and property rights. Since litigated tort cases often involve brutal treatment or accidents inflicting severe physical harm, this area of the law generates much emotion and complex legal doctrine. Shapo cuts through the emotion and the complexity to present a view of these problems that is both legally sound and intuitively appealing. His emphasis is on power relationships between private citizens and other individuals, as well as between private persons and governments and officials. He undertakes to define power in a meaningful way as it relates to many tort issues faced by ordinary citizens, and to make this definition precise by constant reference to concrete cases. His particular focus is on an age-old problem in tort law: the question of when a person has a duty to aid another in peril. In analyzing a large number of cases in this category, Shapo develops an analysis that blends considerations of economic efficiency and humanitarian concern. Recognizing that economic considerations are significant in judicial analysis of these cases, he emphasizes elements that go beyond a simple concern with efficiency, especially the ability of one person to control another’s actions or exposure to risk. These considerations of power and corresponding dependence provide the basis for Shapo’s study of the duties of both private citizens and governments to prevent injury to others. Calling on a broad range of legal precedents, he also refers to social science research dealing with the behavior of bystanders when fellow citizens are under attack. Beyond his application of a power-based analysis to litigation traditionally based in tort doctrine, Shapo offers some speculative suggestions on the possible applicability of his views to several controversial areas of welfare law: medical care, municipal services, and educational standards. This book was written with a view to readership by interested citizens as well as legal scholars, judges, and practicing attorneys.

Clear and concise summary on the rules courts use to solve questions. To enhance understanding, this text explains the reasoning and policies underlying the rules. Professor Shapo selects colorful examples from an enormous variety of cases he has studied and relates the principles of law to understandable real-life situations.

Experimenting With The Consumer exposes the hazards of the mass-market experimentation in which every American consumer and worker is unwittingly tapped for product risk data by manufacturers, scientists, and regulators. Vioxx, Heparin, Avandia, Paxil, fen-phen, estrogens, silicone implants, pacemakers, formaldehyde in FEMA trailers, 60 buckyballs in coatings ... the headlines are increasingly filled with hidden risks coming to light in popular products years after federal agencies approve them for the American public. Shapo shows readers how to get past unreasonable trust or fear and make the best risk-management choices for themselves and their families. He walks them through what questions to ask before consenting to be in a clinical trial; how to evaluate the implied bold-print claims against the small-print disclosures in advertisements for medical products; how to uncover product and environmental risks in their homes, workplaces, supermarkets, and neighborhoods; how to assess and control product risk while maximizing consumer choice and benefit; how to pressure government to tighten consumer protection; and how to seek legal redress. Through a diverse selection of dramatic case studies, Shapo lays bare the incentives of companies and entrepreneurial scientists to fake or obscure experimental data before and after government approval; the fights between interested and disinterested scientists over data; the fights between scientists and doctors over patient rights; the campaigns of activists against government agencies to release experimental drugs; the impact of the journalistic and promotional media on public knowledge and perception of product risk; and the marketing tricks that manufacturers use to harness sexual desire to product launches and to shape the prescription choices of physicians.

"[A] wide-ranging exploration of the doctrine, theories, and policies underlying modern products liability law. It reviews many important cases in this area. Shapo assesses economic and empirical studies and reviews the recent scholarship -- and not so scholarly -- criticisms of products liability law. He also evaluates legislative and administrative proposals for reform... The book is clear, well written, and easy to read. The author clarifies difficult concepts without oversimplifying them." -- Trial

Resource added for the Paralegal program 101101.

This book examines society’s responses to many kinds of experimentation, focusing on both creation of and assessment of risks. As people seek new ways to make their lives safer and happier, the widespread process of experimentation claims victims. Some of these are people who directly and willingly accept the risks of experiments. By comparison, some are effectively experimental subjects in the hands of others who often may not even think of themselves as experimenting with the lives of consumers. The Experimental Society covers a wide spectrum of products and activities, including those that radiate into the environment like nuclear power, hydrofracking, and asbestos. The book spotlights prescription drugs and substances used in the most ordinary consumer products such as salt, caffeine, and BPA in sippy cups. It also discusses the testing of new ways of thinking, including those related to social organization and processes, and even the law itself. A particular concern is the case in which the subjects of experiments are unaware that the experiments are taking place. This lucidly written volume will be useful to practicing lawyers who specialize in personal injury law, and law professors who teach such subjects as torts and products liability, medicine, and science. Physicians and scientists in various branches of medicine will find it provocative, as will political scientists, economists, sociologists, anthropologists, and philosophers.