Operating theatre photography for personal injury cases.

Photography, including records taken in theatre, has an important role to play in the legal settlement of personal injury claims. Photographs taken immediately prior to an operation in the anaesthetic room or during the operation provide valuable evidence for civil litigation. The type of operations at which personal injury photographs should be taken range from emergency surgery and minor operations to exploratory or reparative surgery. The value of pre-operative photography is demonstrated in two examples of orthopaedic surgery for personal injury claims

Personal Injury Litigation in School Cases

With rapidly increasing traffic demand, it is expected that ultra-dense wireless access networks are deployed in many buildings in a near future. Performance evaluation of in-building ultra-dens networks is thus of profound importance. Buildings consist of walls and floors in three-dimensional environments, and the walls and floors attenuate the radio propagation. However, previous studies on the performance evaluation of wireless networks have mainly focused on open areas with an assumption of two-dimensional environments.  In this thesis, we investigate the effects of walls and floors on the performance of user data rate when wireless access networks are densely deployed inside a building. We assume a building of a typical shape, and perform Monte Carlo simulations with multiple configurations of different wall and floor losses as well as different sets of numbers of users and base stations per floor. Numerical results indicate that penetration loss due to walls and floors can increase the data rate of both average and five-percentile users, as this tends to better isolate a given base station and its connected users from the signals of others. We also observe that increasing the number of indoor base stations does not necessarily improve received user data rate because the number of users is limite

Contracting with Tortfeasors: Mandatory Arbitration Clauses and Personal Injury Claims

This article examines some of the cases in which courts have enforced arbitration clauses in personal injury litigation and considers why courts have reached the outcomes they have. It evaluates the ways that arbitration can disturb the traditional values of procedural justice, contractual fairness and the enforcement of tort-based duties. It suggests changes in the law regarding mandatory arbitration of personal injury claims and explores the extent to which change is possible

The medical aspects of personal injury assessment

The doctor who writes the report on injury cases should be a specialist in this very specific field of medico-legal science, with considerable experience. In this article the author describes how such a doctor assesses and reports an injured individual.peer-reviewe

Are speed enforcement cameras more effective than other speed management measures? The impact of speed management schemes on 30mph roads.

This paper presents the results of an evaluation of the impact of various types of speed management schemes on both traffic speeds and accidents. The study controls for general trends in accidents, regression-to-mean effects and migration, separately estimating the accident changes attributable to the impact of the schemes on traffic speed and on traffic volume. It was found that, when judged in absolute terms, all types of speed management scheme have remarkably similar effects on accidents, with an average fall in personal injury accidents of about 1 accident/km/year. In terms of the percentage accident reduction, however, engineering schemes incorporating vertical deflections (such as speed humps or cushions) offer the largest benefits: at 44%, the average reduction in personal injury accidents attributable to such schemes, is twice that at sites where safety cameras were used to control speeds (22%) and they were the only type of scheme to have a significant impact on fatal and serious accidents. Other types of engineering scheme (with a fall of 29% in personal injury accidents) were on average less effective in reducing accidents than schemes with vertical features but more effective than cameras. All types of scheme were generally effective in reducing speeds, with the largest reductions tending to be obtained with vertical deflections and the smallest with other types of engineering schemes

Economic Aspects of Personal Injury Compensation in Ireland

Victims of events including road accidents, workplace injuries and medical negligence are compensated in the Irish legal system through once-off lump-sum awards. In cases where victims have suffered incapacitating injuries but have extended life expectancy, these awards include provision for loss of earnings and life-long medical care that can run into millions. Where liability is contested, significant litigation costs also arise, but even where liability is admitted, the determination of quantum is complex, requiring evidence about future medical care costs, loss of earnings, life expectancy and the returns to be expected from the investment of the lump sum award. The once-off lump sum system of compensating successful plaintiffs has been criticised over the years from both legal and economic perspectives, and change was recommended in a Law Reform Commission report in 1996. Mr. Justice Nicholas Kearns, President of the High Court, established recently a working group to consider the issues involved and charged it to report by November 2010. Since 1995, courts in the United Kingdom have been free to award periodic payments, as distinct from once-off lump sums, where the parties agree, and since the passage of the 2003 Courts Act, whether or not they agree. It is opportune to consider whether periodic payments should be introduced in Ireland and this paper reviews the principal economic aspects of the issue. The paper also considers whether a move to periodic payments would require changes to the government bond market, specifically the issuance of long-dated index-linked Exchequer debt.Compensation awards, catastrophic injury, lump-sum compensation, periodic payments, index-linked annuities

Aggregating Litigation

A comment on Judith Resnik\u27s article on the aggregation of civil cases is presented. The goals of aggregating litigation and the very circumstances in which aggregation works best in achieving those goals are discussed. The aggregation of personal injury cases is also discussed