Baker on Insurance, Transparency and the Civil Justice System
Tom Baker (Penn) has published a chapter on SSRN that makes some important points about what we know, and what we don’t know, about the civil justice system. The chapter is entitled Transparency Through Insurance, Mandates Dominate Discretion (you can find it on SSRN at this link). The abstract is below:
Thischapter describes how liability insurance has contributed to thetransparency of the civil justice system. The chapter makes three mainpoints. First, much of what we know about the empirics of the civiljustice system comes from access to liability insurance data andpersonnel. Second, as long as access to liability insurance data andpersonnel depends on the discretion of liability insuranceorganizations, this knowledge will be incomplete and, most likely,biased in favor of the public policy agenda of the organizationsproviding discretionary access to the data. Third, although mandatorydisclosure of liability insurance data would improve transparency, areasonably complete understanding of the empirics of the civil justicesystem also requires mandatory disclosure of the payments and defenseexpenditures that are not covered by liability insurance.
Thefirst part of this chapter describes existing approaches totransparency through liability insurance in the U.S. The second partanalyzes the role of liability insurance in promoting transparency inseveral discrete civil justice arenas – auto, medical, and productsliability – and, for comparison purposes, workers’ compensation. Theconcluding section addresses objectives to expanding mandatory claimsreporting and links the discussion in this chapter to the literature onthe relationship between liability and insurance more generally.
Thefirst part of this chapter describes existing approaches totransparency through liability insurance in the U.S. The second partanalyzes the role of liability insurance in promoting transparency inseveral discrete civil justice arenas – auto, medical, and productsliability – and, for comparison purposes, workers’ compensation. Theconcluding section addresses objectives to expanding mandatory claimsreporting and links the discussion in this chapter to the literature onthe relationship between liability and insurance more generally.
ADL
Posted in: