The Economic Treatment of Automobile Injuries
![handle is hein.journals/mlr63 and id is 293 raw text is: THE ECONOMIC TREATMENT OF
AUTOMOBILE INJURIES
Alfred F. Conard*
I. INTRODUCTION
T HE automobile has changed more than Americans' ways of trans-
portation. It has changed their ways of housing, of working and
playing, of eating, living, and loving. It has also added to their ways
of suffering and dying.
The suffering and dying have called forth two kinds of treatment.
The better recognized kind is medical treatment, which staves off
death and minimizes pain and disability among the living. The less
recognized kind of treatment is economic-the restoration to the
injury victim or to his dependents of some part of the economic well-
being that has been snatched away from them by loss of income
and by the costs of medical treatment.
Although the economic treatment has reached sizable dimensions
-probably about 2.5 billion dollars a year in the United States'-
until recently, little attention has been given to its scope, its func-
tions, and its additions to or subtractions from the national welfare.
Such attention as it has attracted has been directed chiefly to aspects of
the remedy provided by tort law-the long waiting lists for jury trial,
the alleged pursuit of claimants by ambulance-chasers, the take
of claimants' lawyers, and the failure of many motorists to insure
adequately against liability.2 Information on these topics may illumi-
0 Professor of Law, University of Michigan.-Ed. The author acknowledges the
imaginative and efficient research assistance of Mr. J. Ethan Jacobs, an assistant editor
of the Michigan Law Review.
1. This estimate covers payments for automobile-related injuries made by liability
insurers, life and health insurers, and social security and other social insurance systems.
The amount of automobile liability insurance pay-outs in 1960 was reported as about
1.5 billion dollars. A recent survey indicates that liability insurance pay-outs amount
to about half of total loss shifting on account of automobile accidents. CONARD,
MORGAN, PRATr, VOLTZ & BOMBAUGH, AutrOMOBILE ACCIDENT COSTS AND PAYMENTS:
STUDIES IN THE ECONOMICS OF INJURY REPARATION 1-19, 151 fig. 4-1, 174 fig. 5-10 (1964)
[hereinafter cited as AACP].
2. On delay, see LEVIN & WOOLLEY, DISPATCH AND DELAY: A FmLD STUDY OF JUDICIAL
ADMINISTRATION IN PENNSYLVANIA (1961); ZEiSEL, KALVIN & BUCHHOLZ, DELAY IN THE
COURT (1959); Rosenberg & Sovern, Delay and the Dynamics of Personal Injury Liti-
gation, 59 COLUM. L. REv. 1115 (1959); see also Zeisel & Callahan, Split Trials and
Time Saving: A Statistical Analysis, 76 HARv. L. REv. 1606 (1963).
For an interesting popular description of the operations of a successful ambulance
chaser, see The Saturday Evening Post, March 23, 1957, p. 19; see also DINKER, LEGAL
ETHICS 64 (1953).
On the high cost of compensation collection, see Franklin, Chanin & Mark, Acci-
[279]](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/mlr63&div=27&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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The Economic Treatment of Automobile Injuries
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