Pretrial Settlement with Fairness

Pretrial Negotiation, Litigation, and Procedural Rules

We model the ci il dispute resolution process as a two-stage game with the parties bargaining to reach a settlement in the first stage and then playing a litigation expenditure game at trial in the second stage. We find that the English rule shifts the settlement away from the interim fair and unbiased settlement in most circumstances. O erall welfare changes are in fa or of the party who makes...

Pretrial Settlement with Contingency Fees

We introduce contingency fees into the Reinganum and Wilde (1986) signaling model of litigation. The effect of contingency fees on settlement depends upon the details of the contingency fee contract and the nature of the informational asymmetry assumed in the model. Introducing bifurcated fee contracts where the contingency percentage is higher at trial changes the selection of disputes at tria...

Pii: S0144-8188(00)00026-0

In this paper, we examine the economics of Rule 408 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, whereby the negotiation processes at the pretrial stage are made inadmissible to prove the amount of liability. It is asserted that under Rule 408 a settlement offer is less inclined to be rejected since the judge is expected to make a lower award given the signal he observes. Also, we derive a sufficient cond...

Reforming Fairness: The Need for Legal Pragmatism in the WTO Dispute Settlement Process

Effect of the O.J. Trial

People v. Simpson, dubbed by many as "the trial of the century," was an expensive court case that taxed Los Angeles County's coffers. Many creative, and occasionally unconstitutional, proposals were suggested to lessen the county's hardship, but none were implemented. While the Simpson case may have captured the nation's attention, it was a poor justification to radically alter how the courts' ...