Medical-legal aspects of sleep medicine

Increasingly, sleep medicine practitioners are asked to render opinions regarding legal issues pertaining to violent or injurious behaviors purported to have arisen from sleep or to have resulted from impaired performance caused by sleepiness on the roadway or in the workplace. This article addresses three issues: (1) violence arising from the sleep period, (2) injury or death resulting from sleepiness-induced impaired performance in the workplace or on the road or rail or in the air, and (3) disability determination for employees who have sleep disorders.