Preventive law methods can help to prevent tort liability by minimizing harmful misconduct.  These methods will normally involve the setting of standards for proper conduct, both as guides for future efforts and as benchmarks for performance monitoring.  Where this monitoring suggests past misconduct, the sources and scope of this conduct can be investigated to ensure that it is stopped as quickly as possible and that its harmful effects are rectified.

PREVENTING MALPRACTICE LIABILITY

Preventive law systems aimed at ensuring that professional services are rendered in a non-tortuous manner are specialized quality control systems for the services involved.  These systems are aimed at ensuring that professional services are of a quality level that does not product malpractice litigation and liability. 

Professional malpractice typically arises where a professional fails to render services which conform to the quality level of similar services rendered by the average practitioner in the same professional community.  This community standards rule suggests that liability reduction systems should incorporate appropriate community standards for practice into their monitoring protocols.  The selection of appropriate standards is crucial to developing a quality control program that will reduce risks of liability.

The selection of standards for use in these systems is problematic.  While some professional organizations specify conduct standards, these standards are often expressed and treated as goals rather than as tests for adequate professional conduct.  In articulating standards in this context, there is a basic conflict in setting objectives within quality control systems.   Standards must be high enough to prevent harmful conduct by professionals, but not so high as to reflect badly on the regulated parties who do not conform to the standards in every respect. 

The following reading describes the features of systematic liability prevention programs which are effective in preventing professional malpractice liability:

Quality Control Systems for Preventing Medical Malpractice Liability

Unfortunately, malpractice prevention programs can raise their own legal risks by accumulating information about past misconduct and subjecting that information to critical self-evaluation.  The resulting conclusions and records can be very valuable to adversaries in tort litigation.   The materials at the following link explore some of these risks in connection with peer review programs conducted to ensure the quality of medical services.

Legal Risks of Peer Review Processes

PREVENTING PRODUCTS LIABILITY

Products liability lawsuits are intended to compensate persons who are injured by defectively designed or manufactured products.  In some cases, however, a manufacturer has engaged in conduct that is so outrageous that it is subjected to further punitive liability.  This additional liability beyond the manufacturer's compensatory liability is imposed both to punish the individual or company for past misconduct and, by holding up the manufacturer as an example of the treatment that will be given to other concerns, establishing a deterrent to similar outrageous misconduct in the future.  In effect, these sorts of punitive damages in tort cases operate as the equivalent of a fine to discourage inappropriate conduct in the future.

These sorts of punitive damage awards are rare because they are only granted when a manufacturer recklessly disregards the dangers posed by its product.  The following article discusses the common themes in several cases holding medical device manufacturers liable for punitive damages and present a framework for a preventive law plan aimed at minimizing the risk of similar punitive damage awards.

Avoiding Punitive Damages

To a certain extent, whether a device design is defective and whether disclosures of risks associated with a device are sufficient depend on the setting in which a device is used.  As medical devices are increasingly used in private homes without the direct supervision of medical personnel, the scope of associated products liability for product manufacturers is likely to increase.  The article at the link below explores how the risks of tort liability for product manufacturers expands when sophisticated devices are used by inexperienced users and suggests preventive law methods for reducing this type of liability.