In a system dominated by settlement, scholars, lawyers, and judges who want to promote accuracy in litigation strive to promote accurate settlements. This effort typically relies on judicial intervention in pretrial practice, or on extrajudicial substitutes, to educate parties on the merits of...

Economic theory asserts that, in general, the only cases going to trial should be cases with unpredictable outcomes. When the law applies to the facts to yield consistent and predictable outcomes, litigants have strong incentives to settle cases before trial. I test this theory using a dataset...

The basic rule in civil litigation is that the plaintiff carries the burden of proof and the general standard of proof is preponderance of the evidence. The plaintiff prevails if she establishes her case with a probability exceeding 0.5. Drawing on insights from behavioral economics and new...

Switzerland is about to implement a completely new patent litigation system, following the establishment of a new specialized federal patent trial court and the replacement of twenty-six cantonal codes of civil procedure with a single uniform federal code of civil procedure. This article...

The modern trend is for investors to diversify. Shareholders who own one S&P 500 firm tend to own many of the others as well. This trend casts doubt on the traditional compensation and deterrence rationales for legal rules that hold corporations liable for the acts of their agents. Today, when A...

Post-grant validity challenges at patent offices rely on the private initiative of third parties to correct mistakes made by patent offices. We hypothesize that incentives to bring post-grant validity challenges are reduced when many firms benefit from revocation of a patent and when firms are...

Patent Litigation is the 'King' of Litigation, it is generally perceived; but the situation is not so true with India. Recently, the study of patent litigation has been receiving increasing attention. The literature has addressed both economic questions about the patents and litigation, as well as...

This paper estimates the total cost of patent litigation to alleged infringers. We use a large sample of stock market event studies around the date of lawsuit filings for US public firms from 1984-99. We find that the total costs of litigation are much greater than legal fees and costs are large...

This paper looks at the main source of procedural delay in EC merger cases, the suspension of investigations. Although the ECMR refers to the suspension of investigations as an exceptional instrument, it is used in a high proportion of cases. As the ECMR does not set a time limit for suspension,...

When U.S. corporations cause harm abroad, should foreign plaintiffs be allowed to sue in the United States? Federal courts are increasingly saying no. The courts have expanded the doctrines of forum non conveniens and prudential standing to dismiss a growing number of transnational cases. This...