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The Profs Have It!

By James M. Beck and Mark Herrmann

Practitioners love to complain about the growing chasm between the academy and the practice of law.

It ain't so, Joe!

Just this weekend, we saw three posts from different sites on the Law Professors Network that were well worth reading.

First, over at Torts Prof, we learned that Provost Umphrey hired MOST Health Services, Inc., to screen 161 people for potential silicosis injuries. But MOST didn't comply with the Pennsylvania state regulations governing x-ray screenings. The Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board upheld an $80,500 fine that the Department of Environmental Protection levied on MOST. Torts Prof also links to the decision by the Hearing Board, in case you just can't resist.

Second, the Mass Torts Litigation Blog alerted us to Margherita Saraceno's recent article, "Group Litigation, Access to Justice and Deterrence." Professor Saraceno explains that assembling a group for purposes of litigation "is costly for victims to organize and reduces the injurer's liability costs by facilitating settlement and creating scale economics at trial. The combined effect might be a reduction, rather than an increase, in the deterrent effect of tort law."

We're not sure we like the route that the professor takes, but we kind of like the uses to which you could put her conclusion.

Finally, Civil Procedure Prof Blog turned us on to Elizabeth Thornburg's recent contribution to the academic literature, "Judicial Hellholes, Lawsuit Climates, and Bad Social Science: Lessons from West Virginia." The title, however, grabbed us more than the thesis. Professor Thornburg is not much of a fan of the American Tort Reform Association's annual list of "Judicial Hellholes."

Hats off to the law profs this weekend.

We thought those posts were a whole lot more interesting than typical academic fare -- you know, "Poetry, Granola, and the Law."

Full post as published by Drug and Device Law on May 12, 2008 (boomark / email).