Toxic Torts: Science, Law and the Possibility of Justice

by Carl F. Cranor

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Author: Carl F. Cranor

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Paperback:
ISBN 10: 9780521728409
ISBN 13: 978-0521728409

Hardcover:
ISBN 10: 0521861829
ISBN 13: 978-0521861823

The U.S. tort, or personal injury law, cloaked behind increased judicial review of science, is changing before our eyes, except we cannot see it. U.S. Supreme Court decisions beginning with Daubert v. Merrell-Dow Pharmaceutical altered how courts review scientific testimony and its foundation in the law. The complexity of both science and the law mask the overall social consequences of these decisions. Yet they are too important to remain hidden. Mistaken reviews of scientific evidence can decrease citizen access to the law, increase incentives for firms not to test their products, lower deterrence for wrongful conduct and harmful products, and decrease the possibility of justice for citizens injured by toxic substances. Even if courts review evidence well, greater judicial scrutiny increases litigation costs and attorney screening of clients, and decreases citizens' access to the law. This book introduces these issues, reveals the relationships that can deny citizens just restitution for harms suffered, and shows how justice can be enhanced in toxic tort cases.

Review

"Carl Cranor has achieved the almost impossible goal of a learned, readable, and exciting book on the torturous interactions between law and science in tort litigation. For a scientist, his analysis of case law in this field is exceptionally informative and provocative."
--Ellen K. Silbergeld, PhD, Professor, Environmental Health Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg School of Public Health

"Cranor's insightful discussions of science and law as it is seen by the Courts in toxic tort litigation is a "must read" for scientists in toxicology, epidemiology, and pharmacology."
---Eula Bingham PhD, Professor, College of Medicine, University of Cincinnati

"Toxic Torts is a powerful dissection of the use of science in our system of justice. Professor Cranor has written an important book that examines why most victims of toxic exposures never receive the compensation they deserve."
---David Michaels, PhD, MPH, Director,The Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy, and Research Professor and Associate Chairman, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services

"Carl Cranor's exceptionally lucid analysis of science in regulation and litigation reveals brilliantly why circumstantial evidence currently can convict a dangerous person but not a toxic chemical."
--Sheldon Krimsky, Professor. Department of Urban & Environmental Policy & Planning, Tufts University

"This highly sophisticated examination of science's role in toxic tort litigation is presented so clearly that even a lay reader can comprehend the impact the courts' views on science are having on everyday lives."
Margaret A. Berger, Suzanne J. and Norman Miles Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School

"This is a work of scholarship, dealing with the interactions of law and science in relation to personal injury litigation...The author's disquisitions on the disciplines of epidemiology, statistics, and toxicology, and on their limitations, are instructive for lawyers and legislators who require to wrestle with scientific evidence and expert opinions, while his exposition of legal principles will inform the scientist. This book commends itself to all of their bookshelves, after first being read."
--- MORRIS GREENBERG, MB, FRCP, FFOM

"Toxic Torts makes a substantial contribution to the ongoing debate concerning the admissibility of expert witness testimony and its role in proving causation in toxic tort suits...Researchers and scientists will also come away from reading the book with a greater understanding of how the judicial system incorporates their work into its quest to make justice, perhaps encouraging "greater acceptance of legal decisions in the scientifc community [and] greater scientifc participation in the legal system."79"
-Devin Brennan

"TOXIC TORTS is an excellent book, filled with keen observations about the science/law interaction, the epistemic structure of scientific inquiry, the norms and conventions which regulate the community of researchers, and the special difficulties faced by the torts [*108] system in obtaining justice and deterring malfeasance in toxic tort cases."
--- Andrew T. Hayashi, Department of Economics and Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley

"...his analysis is always informed and sophisticated."
---DLF

"...Toxic Torts deserves the attention of judges, lawyers, and legal scholars...compelling and timely...an insightful and important addition to the literature..."
---David S. Caudill, Jurimetrics [Summer 2009]

Book Description

This book provides an informed perspective of scientific inference and reasoning on the institution of the law, judges' struggles with science, and how this decreases the possibility of justice for ordinary citizens harmed by toxic substances.

About the Author

Carl F. Cranor is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. His work focuses on issues that arise in the legal and scientific adjudication of risks from toxic substances and from the new genetic technologies. He has published numerous articles in these fields as well as authoring Regulating Toxic Substances: A Philosophy of Science and the Law (1993), editing Are Genes Us? The Social Consequences of the New Genetics (1994) and co-authoring the US Congress' Office of Technology Assessment report, Identifying and Regulating Carcinogens (1987). His articles have appeared in diverse journals such as The American Philosophical Quarterly, The Yale Law Journal, and the American Journal of Public Health. He is a member of the Center for Progressive Reform, a virtual think tank comprised of academic scholars interested in protecting public health and the environment.

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Forensic Psychology

Toxic Torts: Science, Law and the Possibility of Justice