The law is increasing affecting the practice of education. The most likely reason a teacher or school will face legal action is in negligence where a student has been injured while under the school’s protection. This may occur in a variety of settings. To satisfy the elements of the tort of negligence the student who becomes in law the plaintiff must prove that a duty of care was owed, that the...

Recently, the Federal Circuit in Knorr-Bremse v. Dana overruled almost twenty years of precedent by striking down the adverse inference doctrine, which had created a negative presumption against any alleged patent infringer for failing to obtain and disclose a patent opinion letter at trial. The decision, while strongly supported by numerous intellectual property and business associations, has ...

The risks involved in litigation are well documented; they include the risk of incurring legal expenses. While much literature focuses on contingent fees as a mechanism for litigants to shift this risk, there is little work on legal expenses insurance—the dominant means of shifting this risk in Europe. In our model, a risk averse plaintiff may purchase legal expenses insurance. The defendant ma...

The present study investigates the effect of framing and legal role on the propensity to accept a settlement offer by litigants in a simulated legal dispute. Participants were given four different scenarios that factorially combined legal role (plaintiff vs. defendant) and frame (positive vs. negative). The results indicated that positively framed litigants were more willing to settle than nega...

We analyze liability rules in a setting where injurers are potentially insolvent and where negligence standards may deviate from the socially optimal level. We show that proportional liability, which sets the measure of damages equal to the harm multiplied by the probability that it was caused by an injurer’s negligence, is preferable to other existing negligence-based rules. Moreover, proporti...

The subject of this study is an analysis possible changes to action limitation period norms the Russian Civil Code in light introduction good faith as a fundamental principle legal regulation civil relations. issue involves non-application by courts result defendant’s actions that are incompatible with faith. Since, on one hand, has been established order protect defendant from untimely, belate...

Deciding matters of legal liability, in torts and other civil actions, requires deciding causation. The injury suffered by a plaintiff must be caused by an event or condition due to the defendant. The courts distinguish between cause-in-fact and proximate causation, where cause-in-fact is determined by the “but-for” test: the effect would not have happened, “but for” the cause.1 Proximate causa...

Do Gasoline Pricing Laws Affect Prices? It Depends on the Plaintiff Studies of the effects of the "below-cost" gasoline pricing laws that exist in several states have led to contradictory results regarding the significance and direction of price impacts at the retail level. The majority have found such laws produce higher prices because they insulate inefficient firms from competition with more...

If a potential tort plaintiff can predict that the court will overestimate damages he is more likely to bring suit, but if the court is aware of this, it will adjust its awards accordingly. In general, court error implies that the court should moderate extreme awards whether they are high or low, because of regression towards the mean. Predictable error, however, tends to push the optimal adjus...