Deterrence, settlement, and litigation under adversarial versus inquisitorial systems

Mass tort litigation and inquisitorial justice.

Evidence production in adversarial vs . inquisitorial regimes

The advantage of the adversarial regime of judicial decision-making is the superior information of the parties, while the advantage of an idealized inquisitorial regime is its neutrality. We model the tradeoff by characterizing the properties of costly estimators used by each regime. The adversarial regime uses an ‘extremal’ estimator that is based on the difference between the most favorable p...

Contingent fees and litigation settlement

Policy makers and static economic models often argue that contingent fees cause lawyers to settle cases sooner than their clients would like, so as to avoid accumulating costs of bargaining. Yet, in a dynamic setting, a willingness to sink costs can be a strategic advantage when seeking to establish the credibility of threats. This paper shows that this can be the case for cost-bearing continge...

Payments Settlement under Limited Enforcement: Private versus Public Systems

What are the benefits provided by a payment system? What are the tradeoffs in public versus private payment systems and in restricted versus open payments arrangements? Modern payment systems encompass a variety of institutional designs with varying degrees of counterparty protection. We develop a framework which allows for an examination and comparison of payment systems, and specification of ...

Favorable Settlement Achieved In Complex Commercial Litigation

Keane & Beane Wins Major RLUIPA Case The firm obtained a decision in federal court awarding injunctive relief and undetermined damages (likely to exceed $4 million) to a local church that has been prevented by the Town of Greenburgh from building a house of worship and religious school on 6.5 acres of church-owned property. The 206-page decision in Fortress Bible Church v. Feiner, et al., 2010 ...