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2 Tort & Med. Y.B. 335 (1962)
Sufficiency of Proof in Traumatic Cancer Cases

handle is hein.journals/tormedyb2 and id is 371 raw text is: Sufficiency of Proof in
Traumatic Cancer Cases
By GEORGE R. PARSONS, JR.*
The factors used in establishing causation between
trauma and cancer vary between the medical and legal
professions. The author feels that the legal concept
of causation is best satisfied by the sequence of events
test, which results in a shifting of the burden of proof
to the defendant.
On the question of causation, see 1 Handling Acci-
dent Cases, 559, 572-576, Causation: A Medico-Legal
Battlefield; 1 Modern Trials § 96, Eye, Foreign
Body, Causative of Cancer, 657-660 and § 97, Breast
Cancer and Trauma, 660-666; and Eidman, The De-
fense of Traumatic Cancer Cases, 9 Defense L.J. 59
(1961).
D ISEASES OF OBSCURE ETIOLOGY raise persistent and frus-
trating problems for the medical and legal professions.
Cancer, for example, is especially frustrating to doctors be-
cause it is the second leading cause of death in the United
States., The judge is confronted with the problem of deter-
mining whether a tortfeasor's conduct is responsible for a
plaintiff's cancer. The workmen's compensation commissioner
must decide whether cancer was caused, aggravated, or ac-
celerated by an injury or accident arising out of and in the
course of employment. With increasing frequency the courts
will probably be asked to decide the liability of cigarette manu-
facturers for their customers' lung cancers.
* Member of the Board of Editors of the Cornell Law Quarterly. B.A.
1959, Wesleyan University; Class of 1962 Cornell Law School.
I Adelson, Injury and Cancer, in PHYSICIAN IN THE COURTROOM 9
(Schroeder ed. 1954).
335

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