Are juries sufficiently sensible to make rational decisions in malpractice and other sorts of personal injury cases? Many scholars believe that malpractice cases should be decided by expert arbitrators because lay people can't understand complex medical issues.

Professor Vidmar begs to differ. In an exhaustive study of malpractice cases in North Carolina (part of an even larger study of malpractice litigation that has been undertaken by Duke University), he gives fascinating descriptions of the facts of malpractice cases as they are litigated. He then describes the interviews that he did with the jurors after their verdicts. The common sense displayed by these fact-finders is enough to impress even the most skeptical. Comparisons of decisions in the same sorts of cases by arbitrators and by physicians reviewing medical files for insurance companies indicate that the conclusions reached by jurors and those of the "professionals" differ little, if at all.

The author points out that all studies indicate that only a very small percentage of malpractice cases go to trial. When there is clear evidence of negligence, the last person who wants to try a case is defense counsel—at the least, a quiet settlement (whatever the amount) keeps the matter off of the front page of the local paper. Similarly, when there is little or no evidence of negligence, the plaintiff's lawyer usually gives up. Thus, when a malpractice case does go to trial, the facts are in serious dispute, opinions about negligence clearly differ, or the parties disagree about the amount of damages to be awarded. Foes of the current system will be gratified to find out (if they don't already know) that even at this stage, there are far more verdicts for defendants than for plaintiffs.

The book presents fascinating case studies, but much of the text deals with analyses of malpractice studies conducted by other scholars and with sometimes tedious explanations of statistical data. The author could have presented the same material in a much more interesting and lively way. This may mean that most readers will be those who are professionally involved with malpractice law. That would be unfortunate, because the audience should include physicians who are interested, for whatever reason, in the issues surrounding "the malpractice crisis" (which the author shows is not really a crisis at all). Those who do read this text will be comforted when they find that the results of most malpractice cases are what they themselves would consider fair.

This is an extremely interesting book that is well worth reading despite its sometimes turgid prose.