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Recommended: Essay on tort reform
For years, the word “tort reform” has been a favorite topic in the news channels, but what does it really mean by tort reform? What is a tort and why does it need to be changed or reformed, and what kind of alteration needs to be made to the tort?
Tort: A tort is a civil wrong where public trust is breached. In tort, one party offenses or harms another party (Bagley & Savage, 2010). On the basis of tort, plaintiff file a lawsuit for compensation for any damages occurred to him/her.
Plaintiff: Plaintiff is the one who is injured or suffered damages due to negligence of another party.
Defendant: The person or company who causes the harm to the plaintiff is defendant. Due to negligent behavior of defendant, plaintiff suffers damages.
Tort Law: “Unlike criminal law, tort law focuses on civil actions” (Pearson
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The basis of their success was the promise of tort law reform on a national level which has led to a lengthy debate over the long period of times (Cook, 2013).
Tort reform is an effort to decrease the reward or set the compensation limit to the injured party in a civil lawsuit. Proponents of tort reform argue that the cap placed on the torts help decrease the flood of frivolous lawsuits that happen every year (Pearson & DiLascio, 2015). They also claim that tort reform can cut high costs linked with the U.S. tort system and presume that tort reform can save insurance & healthcare cost to the consumers.
In a nutshell, torts are legal damages that invade the rights of another party and lead to some form of public liability. Tort reform involves wide range of legal areas and could apply to a vast portion of our national legal system.
While limiting the amount of frivolous lawsuits and reducing the overall court related costs are a welcome change, that doesn’t render the tort reform a true resolution to the
Given the difficulties in the present tort system, we often become victims of the failures of medicine as opposed to beneficiaries of its many successes. Physicians have lost in that they have changed, limited, or closed their practices after having spent the most vigorous years of their lives training for such work. Patients have lost in that the physicians of their choice, with whom they have developed trusting relationships, are no longer available to care for them. It is certain that the system requires sensible reform (p.525).
Damages in the United States include two categories. Compensatory damages are intended to compensate for the plaintiff’s loss. Punitive damages, on the contrary, are meant to punish the defendant .The punitive damages exceed the plaintiff’s loss, to dissuade the defendant from any further wrongdoings. For instance, having a company pay significant punitive damages may encourage it to greater caution. Another difference between the two categories is the money involved. If the damages are compensatory, the money usually goes entirely to the plaintiff, but if they are punitive, part of the money goes to the law firm and part to the plaintiff.
Tort, one of the crucial subjects of study when analyzing common law jurisdictions. Tort, is an action which causes another person or party to suffer harm or loss []. The person who has committed a tortious act is called the tortfeasor while the person who suffered harm or loss from such act is called the injured party or the victim. Although crimes may be torts, torts may not be crimes [] simply because a tort may not have broken a law. In fact, one must understand that the key idea of tort is not to punish the tortfeasor(s) but rather to compensate the victim(s).
Steiner, John E. (2013). Problems in health care law: challenges for the 21st century (10th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
...ulations in the U.S. judicial system is “most define the law as a system of principles and processes by which people in a society deal with disputes and problems, seeking to solve or settle them without resorting to force” (p. 15). Some situations cannot be rectified in a board meeting. However, negligence is in the category of objectives of tort law, it is also the most popular lawsuit pursued by patients against medical professionals against doctors and healthcare organizations (Bal, 2009). Objectives of Tort Law
I am going to write this paper on tort reform, what it is and its overarching role in the documentary. Tort Reform is defined as “proposed changes in the civil justice system that aim to reduce the ability of victims to bring litigation or to reduce damages they can receive”. Another theme that I believe ties in really well with the idea of tort reform is the idea of how big of an influence money has in politics. Many people would agree that there are a lot of companies that would want tort reform so they don’t have to worry about losing millions of dollars.
Tort reformers believe that courts must reduce the ability of defendants’ liability in order to avoid economic decline. In the years to come, the proposals likely to generate the biggest dispute include malpractice and class-action reform, limits on noneconomic and punitive damages, and a legislative solution to asbestos legation (Rushmann, 2006). There are many lawsuits. But the frivolous lawsuits should not be taken seriously and not cost our courts and citizens time and/or money.
The purpose of this paper is to serve as an overview and summary of the major points found in “Health Care Reform and Equity: Promise, Pitfalls, and Prescriptions” (Fiscella, 2011) This article outlines both good, potentially bad of health care reform and possible solutions to improve on the program.
This is where the individuals exercise their rights to seek compensations for damages or injuries. Also this is a law that is not controlled by the judges based on previous things that had happen in the past.
Tort reform is very controversial issue. From the plaintiff’s perspective, tort reforms seems to take liability away from places such as insurance companies and hospitals which could at times leave the plaintiff without defense. From the defendant’s perspective, tort reform provides a defense from extremely large punitive damage awards. There seems to be no median between the two. Neither side will be satisfied. With the help of affiliations such as the American Tort Reform Association and Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, many businesses and corporations are working to change the current tort system to stop these high cash awards.
Rising health care costs have caused a national crisis, and all agree we must embrace reform. President Obama has initiated his national health care plan in the hopes of decreasing some of the inflated costs. When attempting to resolve this issue, one must always address the root of the problem. A large portion of these inflationary costs stem from malpractice lawsuits, and so begins the debate for tort reform: legislation which would cut the costs of health care by reducing the risk of civil litigation and exposure to fraudulent claims (“What”). However, the real factor at hand and the real cause of the industry’s high costs does not come solely from the cost incurred from these lawsuits, but from over-expenditures on the part of doctors, who over-test and over-analyze so as to safeguard themselves from the threat of malpractice lawsuits. Thus, large public support exists for tort reform. While the proposed legislation enacted through tort reform could cut the costs of health care and positively transform the industry, it is ultimately unconstitutional and could not withstand judicial scrutiny.
Americans file about 15 million lawsuits a year. (Cannell) A fourth of all lawsuits filed are either frivolous or fraudulent. Perhaps, the careless point of view about the seriousness of lawsuits is perpetuated by the false representation on the many law shows on TV, such as Ally
after suffering harm from the acts of the other party (Turner, 2013). A tort is a civil wrong
Considerable effort has been expended in attempts to identify the purpose of the law of torts. However, the range of interests protected by the law of torts makes any search for a single aim underlying the law a difficult one. For example, actions for wrongful interference with goods or trespasses to land serve fundamentally different ends from an action seeking compensation for a personal injury. Nevertheless, following the research I have carried out the fundamental purpose of the law of torts is to achieve compensation and appeasement and to obtain deterrence and justice, in order to determine the conditions under which certain losses may be shifted to persons who created the risks which in some way led to the losses. In doing so, the law of torts attempts to balance the utility of a particular type of conduct against the harm it may cause. During the course of this essay I will discuss each function separately and I will investigate how each function achieves its individual resolution of a tort.
From the 1990s, the reports that cover the compensation cases increased dramatically in the mass media (Almond, 2004). There is a view that a huge number of tort cases in the ‘compensation culture’ are unjustified and unfair. In the mid-1990s, the term ‘compensation culture’ first appeared in a famous British newspaper (Levin, 1993). Actually, this is an extreme view, which will be criticized in this paper. This essay emphasizes the compensation culture is a myth (Morris, 2007). There are three reasons: Firstly, the data of the tort claims declined in recent years. Secondly, some victims do not receive the compensation or enough compensation that they deserve. Thirdly, the mass media and public organizations created the ‘compensation