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...

Commentary and analysis of the Report of the Working Group on Mass Torts of the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules, issued February 15, 1999. The Report includes three studies from the Federal Judicial Center, as well as potential solutions for consideration. The various appendices to the Report...

This Article reports findings from an ethnographic study of self-help programs in two western states. The study investigated how self-help assistance provided by partnerships between courts and nongovernmental organizations implicates advocacy and access to justice for domestic violence...

This paper aims to investigate whether (inEurope) the Favoring Plaintifffee-shifting Rule can be an alternative to legal aid for assisting wealth-constrained Plaintiffs in pursuing cases, that would otherwise be dropped. According to the Favoring Plaintiff fee-shifting Rule, in litigation a...

Civil law is primarily enforced via private litigation. One characteristic of private enforcement is that litigation levels tend to cycle between booms and busts. This Article builds a theory for explaining this fluctuation, proposing that plaintiffs' attorneys can be understood as economic...

Litigation finance companies have some incentives to screen plaintiffs applying for financing based on the strength of their claims, but a company may still have incentives to provide financing when the probability that a plaintiff would prevail at litigation is low. The result is that...

The purpose of this chapter is to survey the academic literature on the economics of litigation and to synthesize its main themes. The chapter begins by introducing the basic economic framework for studying litigation and out-of-court settlement. One set of issues addressed is positive (or...

This chapter discusses the challenges of determining appropriate remedies in cases involving animals with a focus on companion animals. Damages fall into one of two categories: substitutionary relief, which is based on the value of loss of the animal, and specific relief, which “seeks to...