Damned Causation
Elissa Philip Gentry The inherent mismatch between the questions law asks and the answers statistics provides has led courts to create arbitrary rules for statistical evidence. Adherence to these rules undermines deterrence goals and runs the risk of depriving recovery for whole categories of injuries. In response, some courts adopt new theories of recovery, relying on the loss of chance doctrine to provide some relief to injured plaintiffs. These solutions, however, only serve to exacerbate the fundamental misunderstanding of probabilities. While these doctrines largely operate within the context of medical malpractice, the increased ability to capture more statistical data may prompt courts to acknowledge the probabilistic nature of causation in other contexts. It is important to ensure that courts correctly approach this information. This Article presents a simple framework for thinking…