Risk Assessment in the Courts: A Roadmap for Risk Analysts, 1998. J. S. Applegate, Indiana University School of Law, Bloomington, IN; and W. E. Wagner, Case Western Reserve University School of Law, Cleveland, OH
In the American legal system, risk information (including risk assessment) is the basis for decisions not only by expert regulatory agencies, but also decisions by courts comprised of generalist judges and lay juries. Judicial familiarity with risk concepts and judicial management of risk information is extremely varied. This poses a challenge to those who appear before courts as witnesses and as advocates and must persuasively communicate risk information. Judicial approaches to risk assessment are most clearly reflected in the reports of specific cases; therefore, the poster session collects key cases that involved risk assessment and organizes them in several ways to make them more accessible to legal and technical risk practitioners. First, a distinction will be drawn between the use of risk assessment in tort (personal injury) cases and regulatory cases. Second, it is important to understand the limitations of risk assessment in establishing legal causation in personal injury cases. Courts have issued important decisions on both the admissibility and sufficiency of risk information. Third, the session will distinguish among the degrees of deference that courts afford to risk information in the regulatory context. The 1998 edition of this poster, which is an ongoing project of the Risk, Science, and Law Specialty Group, organizes and summaries key cases in which risk analysis played a role.
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