 |
||||
Online Casebook
|
1997-98 Online Casebook SRA
Risk Science & Law Specialty Group |
|||
| Risk
Science and Law Online Casebook In the years 1997 and 1998, law professors John Applegate (Indiana University) and Wendy Wagner (Case Western Reserve University) compiled contributions of case law analysis and legal commentary provided or selected by themselves and other members of our Specialty Group. This project is our Casebook of Risk-Based Legal Decisions, which is ongoing and cumulative. Each year at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Risk Analysis our Group makes a poster platform presentation to expand and update this project. Our Group’s goal is to collect and synopsize the key cases that involved risk analysis and to organize and present them so they are more accessible and useful to legal and scientific risk practitioners. The Casebook incorporates the currently "hot" risk-related cases along with key historical cases. It already is being disseminated annually in hard copy. This start-up version, the Online Casebook, will comprise a major subset of cases that pertain to legal and scientific risk issues linked to toxic chemicals in the environment, food sources, pharmaceutical drugs, and consumer products. Beginning with 10 case analyses in this first online edition, we are planning to accumulate added contributions each calendar quarter. Generally, the online case selections will deal with either judicial review of regulatory health risk assessments or civil litigation of toxic risk or injury claims. We will try to balance the issues of law and science so risk science practitioners as well as environmental and toxic tort lawyers will find ideas germane to their professional interests.
Contents of Online Casebook, First Edition, July 1999 Ambrosini v. Labarraque: Admitting Animal and Cell Evidence Would chemical in vitro cell studies and in vivo animal studies be insufficient, in all cases, to support a conclusion that a particular drug caused birth defects? Flue-Cured Tobacco Cooperative Stabilization Corporation v. EPA: Judging Complex Scientific Evidence Was a government agency correct in asserting that its risk assessment supporting the classification of Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) as a known human carcinogen was not judicially reviewable because, in part, the factual issues involved complicated and highly technical scientific evidence? Must a plaintiff resorting to scientific proof of causation under a legal standard that it is more probably true than not true that a toxic exposure caused a disease meet a stringent scientific standard such as 95-percent certainty? Salmon River Concerned Citizens v. Robertson: Justifying Safety Factors in Risk Analysis Can a government agency justify herbicide spraying based on a health risk analysis that provides a safety factor of 100 when extrapolating low-level human risks from laboratory animal studies? Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Havner: Favoring Epidemiological Evidence Does recovery of damages in a toxic tort lawsuit require evidence of statistically significant human (epidemiological) studies that demonstrate a positive association between a toxic agent and a toxic injury? AFL-CIO v. OSHA: Admitting Scientific Opinion as Scientific Evidence Can a government agency set permissible exposure levels (PELs) for 428 toxic substances without specific, substantial evidence, relying instead on consensus levels among scientists? Hottinger v. Trugreen Corp.: Testifying With Reliable Evidence Will "fallout" from Bradley v. Brown, which finds the scientific foundation of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) disorder to be unreliable, lead to excluding other, more reliable evidence of a toxic chemical injury? Lakie v. Smith-Kline Beecham: Reaching the Jury With Imperfect Evidence How strict is the standard of scientific proof for causation just so a claim for toxic chemical injury may reach a jury and not be declared inadmissible? Berry v. CSX Transportation, Inc.: Admitting Epidemiological Evidence to the Jury What is the reliability standard of human (epidemiological) evidence of disease causation or health risk necessary to keep "junk science" from being admitted as evidence to a jury? What is the sufficiency standard of human (epidemiological) evidence of disease causation or health risk necessary to keep "junk science" from being used as evidence once it has been admitted to a jury?
|
|
|||
Copyright © 1999 by Tec-Com,
Inc. |
||||