The ‘SKADE LITorSET’ Expert System for Corporate ‘Litigate or Settle’ Decisions

The ‘SKADE LITotSET’ system is a blackboard‐based expert system that makes ‘litigate or settle’ decisions in the product liability area. It has three knowledge sources: Legal, Manager and Insurance Adjuster. The combined expertise from each of these is required to solve the ‘litigate or settle’ problem. The control component co‐ordinates the interaction between the various knowledge sources on the blackboard. Based on the latest changes to the data on the blackboard, it selects and executes the next knowledge source. The model reproduces the decision makers' opportunistic reasoning processes by the interaction between the various knowledge sources through the blackboard. The results of analyses of a hypothetical case through a series of experiments with the ‘SKADE LITorSET’ system indicate that the blackboard is an appropriate model for development of expert systems in the ‘litigate or settle’ decision domain. The initial success with the blackboard approach suggests that further work needs to be done to see whether more complex models can be built to incorporate a broader range of determinants of settlement decisions.