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Medical Malpractice Appeals in a Civil Law System: Do Administrative and Civil Courts Award Noneconomic Damages Differently?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Sofia Amaral-Garcia
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Abstract

How do courts award noneconomic damages? Does it matter if the state is the defendant? This article addresses these questions in the context of medical malpractice appeals to the Spanish Supreme Court. Moreover, this study provides the first empirical analysis of the quantification of noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases in administrative courts, where the state is the defendant, and in civil courts. This separation of jurisdictions is a common feature in civil law tradition countries. Yet, critics of this separation in general, and specialized courts in particular, argue that parties might be subject to different treatments and that similar cases might reach different outcomes, namely in terms of the quantification of damages. A consistent result of this paper is that no significant differences between noneconomic damages in civil and administrative appeals were found. The separation of jurisdictions does not necessarily imply that courts reach different outcomes, even when the state is the defendant. Citizens should not refrain from bringing their claims forward against the state, a more powerful party. In the current era of increasing juridification and judicialization of modern life (Ginsburg 2009; Hirschl 2006; Hirschl 2011), it is crucial for society that citizens and other parties litigating with the state are not disadvantageously treated.

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Articles
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Law & Society Review , Volume 53 , Issue 2 , June 2019 , pp. 386 - 419
Copyright
© 2019 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

I am grateful to Ted Eisenberg, Michael Faure, Nuno Garoupa, Fernando Goméz-Pomar, Gerard Hertig, David Hyman, Jonathan Klick, Sonia Ramos, Louis Visscher, Rainer Winkelmann, and the participants at the European Conference on Health Economics (Zurich), AEDE (Valencia), ETH Zurich, and the University of Zurich for helpful feedback. I am particularly grateful to Mattia Nardotto, the reviewers, and editors at the Law & Society Review for their insightful comments on this paper (previous tittle: “Non-economic Damages in Medical Malpractice Appeals: Does the jurisdiction make a difference?”). Financial support is acknowledged to FCT, Portuguese Ministry of Higher Education and Science, grant SFRH/BD/37917/2007.

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