Tort Reform and Access to Justice in Personal Injury Cases: Implications of Lawyers' Screening and Framing Decisions.

In this paper, I analyze results from an experimental vignette study in which 83 personal injury lawyers were asked to evaluate a hypothetical products liability case. Half of the lawyers practice in states considered to be difficult jurisdictions for the practice of personal injury law due to tort reform and conservative political climates (Texas and Colorado), while the other half work in states that have been relatively unaffected by tort reform and are considered to be more "plaintiff friendly" (Pennsylvania and Massachusetts). While lawyers in reform states and non-reform states were equally likely to accept the hypothetical case with which they were presented, they approached the case in different ways, used different theories of liability, and made different arguments in order to justify their acceptance of the case. I close the paper with a discussion of the practical and theoretical implications of these differences in case screening and framing, including implications for access to justice. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]