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The growing dimensions of personal injury liability.

IT IS NOW just about a year since the medical malpractice crisis suddenly became evident. Its coming had been predictable for more than a decade, but to most people it seemed to arrive with great suddenness-almost as a bolt out of the blue. A major reason it came when it did was because professional liability insurance carriers had determined that the financial base provided by physicans' insurance premiums was nowhere nearly large enough to cover the escalating costs resulting from more claims, more litigation and mounting awards against defendant physicians. They reacted by tripling or quadrupling their premiums or by attempting to withdraw entirely from the field. The initial response by physicians was predictable and understandable. Anger, frustration and confusion became widespread as many physicians found themselves unwilling or actually unable to pay the new and often exorbitant premiums-or not able to get insurance at all. There was an almost desperate search for a quick and easy remedy, but even after a year none has been found. It is now becoming evident that the professional liability situation of physicians is only a tiny tip of what must be a huge iceberg of a problem which seems destined to have enormous impact on the nation as a whole as it enters into its third hundred years. It now appears that the medical malpractice crisis is only symptomatic of the real issues to be faced-the growing dimensions of personal injury liability and the hard fact that not only physicians but sooner or later the nation as a whole will simply not be able to pay the ever mounting costs of personal injury liability if today's trends continue. This is a sobering prospect and one to give pause. The crisis first came to general attention in medicine only because the relatively small number of physicians could provide only a relatively small financial base for their professional liability insurance coverage, and this has proved entirely inadequate to meet the escalating costs of more claims, more litigation and mounting awards against physician defendants. But physicians are not alone. Many other professions are