Settlements are often considered to be welfare-enhancing because they save time and litigation costs. In the presence of court error, however, this conclusion may be wrong. Court decisions create positive externalities for future litigants which will not occur if a dispute is settled out of...

There have long been claims that compensations for noneconomic damages are random because tort law does not provide clear guidance regarding these compensations. I investigate, in both settled and tried medical malpractice cases, whether noneconomic damage payments are arbitrary and what...

In this Essay, I focus attention on and raise some questions about the treatment of women by three power centers: the corporate businesses that provide medical products to women, the regulatory governmental structures that exist to protect consumers from hazardous drugs and medical devices, and...

Policy tools that potentially foster efficient levels of health and safety are regulation, litigation, and taxation. Most U.S. regulatory agencies set standards that are more stringent than the efficient level of safety. As a result, there is strong justification for a regulatory compliance...

Medical malpractice law and tort reform are contentious issues. In this paper we focus on Italy as an example of a civil law jurisdiction. Italian medical malpractice law is essentially judge-made law. However, its effectiveness is likely to be curtailed by excessive delays in litigation....

Empirical researchers have begun to explore the influence of apologies on litigant decision making. This research has found that the effects of apologies on decision making are complex, but that apologies generally influence claimants' perceptions, judgments, and decisions in ways that are...

The paper shows that Legal Cost Insurance (LCI) is a device to enhance potential litigants' bargaining position rather than to re-allocate risk. Being insured decreases the cost an insured party has to bear if settlement negotiations fail and the case goes to trial. This shifts the threat...

During the Progressive Era at the beginning of the 20th century, the United States replaced litigation by regulation as the principal mechanism of social control of business. To explain why this happened, we present a model of choice of law enforcement strategy between litigation and regulation...

From BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to the National Football League’s (NFL) inability to honor Super Bowl tickets, corporate defendants are contravening the established litigation wisdom and offering full compensation to victims — without haggling to pay pennies on the dollar,...

Asserting that class actions are compatible with civil law systems, the author describes the Brazilian system of class actions, comparing it with its American counterpart, and placing it in the context of other systems' approaches to class action litigation. In this paper, the author presents...