Reviews and Notes: Legal Medicine: Medical Malpractice and the American Jury: Confronting the Myths about Jury Incompetence, Deep Pockets, and Outrageous Damage Awards

N Vidmar. 318 pages. Ann Arbor: Univ of Michigan Pr; 1995. $34.50. ISBN 0-472-10639-2. Order phone 313-764-4388.

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 …