Litigation News

Untangling Causation Issues In Law And Medicine Hazardous Substance Litigation

Judges and juries are increasingly being asked to settle questions about disease caused by hazardous products.With the growth of litigation on toxic substances and unsafe products, more and more courts must wrestle with the complicated scientific proof of the relation between exposure and disease or injury.

This proof frequently involves the use of probabilistic evidence in the form of statistical tests and epidemiologic studies.

Anglo-American law relies on deductive notions of causation and is suspicious of probabilistic evidence of causation.As a result, court decisions of hazardous substance cases are sometimes based on a confused understanding of the critical causal connection.

Physicians who testify in such cases, either as the treating doctor or as expert witnesses, must be aware of the court`s difficulty with probabilistic evidence. In addition, physicians must state clearly the role of such evidence

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	Did You Know?
	Environmental litigation is an up-and-coming, but complex form of litigation. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was passed in 1970 in conjunction with the Environmental Quality Improvement Act, the Environmental Education Act and the Environmental Protection Act. Environmental issues have gained importance, especially over the recent years, as mankind started to comprehend the damage that has already been done to mother earth.