Online Casebook
1999-2000 Online Casebook
SRA
Risk Science & Law Specialty Group
This second edition of the Risk Science & Law Online Casebook of risk-based legal decisions was written and compiled by members of the SRA Risk Science & Law Specialty Group and was edited by the group's founder Wayne Roth-Nelson.
Contents:
Redland Soccer Club v. Dept. of Army of U.S.
Should an inference of individual causation require a proven causal
connection between a specified toxic exposure and a specified injury or
disease, or can a sufficient statistical association support a
causation argument with reasonable scientific certainty? Can a
one-in-a-million regulatory risk threshold used by the EPA be adopted as a
uniform basis for distinguishing an insignificant health risk?
In re Hanford Nuclear Reservation Litigation
Can a simple statistical risk threshold be applied as a legal standard to
establish general causation? Should animal
evidence of chemical carcinogenicity be admitted to determine general
causation in the face of abundant human (epidemiological) evidence? Can
the evidence of actual exposure, dose and risk from toxic chemicals used
to determine individual causation be so complex that a jury could be
misled into a wrong judgment?
Rutherford et al. v. Owens-Illinois, Inc.
Should the argument of increased risk, if successful, serve to
meet the standard for "cause in fact" or, in other words,
specific, individual causation?
United States v. Broderick Investment Co.
Will federal regulators be found arbitrary and capricious where an agency
decrees a hazardous waste site cleanup must reach a low risk level of 1
expected cancer in a population much greater than that actually exposed?
Should an agency decree a cleanup standard based on future land use that
is highly improbable and contrary to historical trend?
Sierra Club v. Utah Solid and Hazardous Waste Control Board
Is the public interest served by "regulatory risk assessments"
that very often exaggerate the realistic exposures, doses and health
risks by screening the potential risks under assumed, hypothetical
worst-case conditions?
Leather Industries of America, Inc. v. EPA
Can EPA regulate a contaminant by placing a cap on allowable
concentrations based not on risk calculations but on a level lower than 99
percent of the values found in a survey of that contaminant's
source?
Benedi v. McNeil, PPC, Inc.
Must an inference of causation necessarily depend on statistical
(epidemiological) evidence, or can clinical diagnostic evidence alone
serve to reach a finding of causation? What about the
relevance and reliability of anecdotal evidence in the form of medical
case summaries or drug experience reports?
Copyright © 2000
Last modified September 27, 2000.