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13 Ark. L. Rev. 89 (1958-1959)
Comparative Negligence in Arkansas: A before and after Survey

handle is hein.journals/arklr13 and id is 91 raw text is: ARKANSAS LAW REVIEW and BAR ASSOCIATION JOURNAL Volume 13 SPRING, 1959 Number 2 Comparative Negligence in Arkansas: A Before and After Survey Maurice Rosenberg* INTRODUCTION This is a report of an effort to measure the impact, primarily up- on judicial administration, of legislating a basic change in negligence law. The change was to substitute for the contributory negligence rule one form of the group of damage apportionment rules that are collectively called comparative negligence. Lawyers planned and directed the effort with important help from sociologists. This work is part of a three-ply study of the impact upon the civil courts when comparative negligence becomes the rule in the field of negli- gent torts. The survey was conducted by the Columbia University Pro- ject for Effective Justice' in cooperation with the Arkansas Bar Association. It was not an opinion poll in the popular sense. The emphasis was on obtaining reports of actual experience from knowledgeable Arkansas judges and lawyers both before and after enactment in 1955 of a statute which converted Arkansas to com- parative negligence in the run of personal injury cases.2 Compre- hensive written questionnaires were the means of gathering the data. In essence, the problem was to learn whether the new rule8 wrought any discernible changes in local courts' workload; what the changes were; and whether they helped or hindered the courts in *Professor of Law, Columbia University. Director, Columbia University Project for Effective Justice. The author records his indebtedness to the follow- ing members of the Project Staff, who participated in collecting and analyzing the data: Allen H. Barton, Ph. D., Assistant Professor of Sociology, Columbia University; Sanford J. Fox, Esq.; Joel Cibener, Esq.; Norman Schwartz, Esq.; Audrey Lipsett and Edward Rabin, Columbia Law School '59. 1The Project was created in 1956 to conduct systematic studies of the law in action by using social science as well as legal skills. Its work has focused on personal injury litigation as the key to the problem of excessive delay in civil litigation. Generous support has been given by the Walter E. Meyer Institute of Law, Inc. and by The New York Foundation, Inc. 'Ark. Acts 1955, No. 191 § 1. 'Although the 1955 rule is not now in force in Arkansas, (see text at note 23), it will be convenient to refer to it as the new rule in contradistinction to the old (contributory negligence) rule.

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