IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/uct/uconnp/2014-30.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Comparing All-Or-Nothing and Proportionate Damages: A Rent Seeking Approach

Author

Listed:
  • Jef De Mot

    (University of Ghent)

  • Thomas J. Miceli

    (University of Connecticut)

Abstract

This paper compares the all-or-nothing and proportionate damage rules for allocating damages in tort cases under evidentiary uncertainty. The focus is on how the two rules affect litigation expenditures by plaintiffs and defendants. The results of simulation experiments show that the expected judgment at trial is higher under the all-or-nothing rule for cases where the defendant did not take adequate care, but the judgment is higher under the proportionate rule when the defendant took more than adequate care. As for litigation expenditures, assuming equal costs of litigation, overall expenditures are higher under the all-or-nothing rule, except for very weak and very strong cases.

Suggested Citation

  • Jef De Mot & Thomas J. Miceli, 2014. "Comparing All-Or-Nothing and Proportionate Damages: A Rent Seeking Approach," Working papers 2014-30, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:uct:uconnp:2014-30
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://media.economics.uconn.edu/working/2014-30.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. George L. Priest & Benjamin Klein, 1984. "The Selection of Disputes for Litigation," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 13(1), pages 1-56, January.
    2. Shavell, Steven, 1985. "Uncertainty over Causation and the Determination of Civil Liability," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(3), pages 587-609, October.
    3. Levmore, Saul, 1990. "Probabilistic Recoveries, Restitution, and Recurring Wrongs," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(2), pages 691-726, June.
    4. Katz, Avery, 1988. "Judicial decisionmaking and litigation expenditure," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 127-143, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. De Mot Jef & Miceli Thomas J., 2015. "Comparing All-or-Nothing and Proportionate Damages: A Rent-Seeking Approach," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-17, March.
    2. Hyde, Charles E. & Williams, Philip L., 2002. "Necessary costs and expenditure incentives under the English rule," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 133-152, August.
    3. Farmer Amy & Pecorino Paul, 2016. "Litigation with a Variable Cost of Trial," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(2), pages 203-226, July.
    4. Shmuel Leshem & Geoffrey P. Miller, 2009. "All-or-Nothing versus Proportionate Damages," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 38(2), pages 345-382, June.
    5. Orley Ashenfelter & David E. Bloom & Gordon B. Dahl, 2013. "Lawyers as Agents of the Devil in a Prisoner's Dilemma Game," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 10(3), pages 399-423, September.
    6. Orley C. Ashenfelter & David E. Bloom & Gordon B. Dahl, 2013. "Lawyers as Agents of the Devil in a Prisoner's Dilemma Game: Evidence from Long Run Play," NBER Working Papers 18834, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Luke M. Froeb & Bernhard Ganglmair & Steven Tschantz, 2016. "Adversarial Decision Making: Choosing between Models Constructed by Interested Parties," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(3), pages 527-548.
    8. Daniel P. Kessler & Daniel L. Rubinfeld, 2004. "Empirical Study of the Civil Justice System," NBER Working Papers 10825, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Yee, Kenton K., 2008. "Dueling experts and imperfect verification," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 246-255, December.
    10. Osborne, Evan, 1999. "Who should be worried about asymmetric information in litigation?," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 399-409, September.
    11. Jack Hirshleifer & Evan Osborne, 1999. "Truth and the Legal Battle," UCLA Economics Working Papers 790, UCLA Department of Economics.
    12. Steven Shavell, 2005. "Liability for Accidents," NBER Working Papers 11781, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. repec:elg:eechap:15325_17 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Poitras, Marc & Frasca, Ralph, 2011. "A unified model of settlement and trial expenditures: The PriestâKlein model extended," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 188-195, September.
    15. Pierre Bentata, 2014. "Liability as a complement to environmental regulation: an empirical study of the French legal system," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 16(3), pages 201-228, July.
    16. Amy Farmer & Paul Pecorino, 2013. "Discovery and Disclosure with Asymmetric Information and Endogenous Expenditure at Trial," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 42(1), pages 223-247.
    17. Bentata Pierre, 2013. "Environmental Regulation and Civil Liability Under Causal Uncertainty: An Empirical Study of the French Legal System," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 9(2), pages 239-263, October.
    18. Zhou, J., 2010. "Access to justice : An economic approach," Other publications TiSEM 9d70f451-35c4-4878-92bf-7, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    19. Osório-Costa, António M., 2015. "Argumentation Quantity and Quality: A Litigation Success Function," MPRA Paper 63275, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Baharad, Roy & Cohen, Chen & Nitzan, Shmuel, 2022. "Litigation with adversarial efforts," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    21. De Mot Jef & Miceli Thomas J., 2019. "Litigation and the Product Rule: A Rent Seeking Approach," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 15(1), pages 1-19, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    All-or-nothing rule; proportionate damages; litigation costs; rent-seeking;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K13 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Tort Law and Product Liability; Forensic Economics
    • K41 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Litigation Process

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:uct:uconnp:2014-30. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Mark McConnel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deuctus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.