IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/ejlwec/v37y2014i2p299-324.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Free choice of legal fee shifting rules?

Author

Listed:
  • Christian Schwab
  • Hin-Yue Tang
  • Stefan Winter

Abstract

In every country in the world parties to private litigation are subject to a predetermined fee shifting regime. While there are no institutionalized opt-out provisions so far, we demonstrate that such provisions could improve welfare. We argue that private negotiations are not a viable alternative to such opt-out provisions. We derive the conditions under which welfare improvements occur and suggest an applicable design for such an opt-out scheme. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2014

Suggested Citation

  • Christian Schwab & Hin-Yue Tang & Stefan Winter, 2014. "Free choice of legal fee shifting rules?," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 299-324, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:ejlwec:v:37:y:2014:i:2:p:299-324
    DOI: 10.1007/s10657-011-9296-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10657-011-9296-x
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10657-011-9296-x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Polinsky, A Mitchell & Rubinfeld, Daniel L, 1998. "Does the English Rule Discourage Low-Probability-of-Prevailing Plaintiffs?," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(1), pages 141-157, January.
    2. Kathryn E. Spier, 1994. "Pretrial Bargaining and the Design of Fee-Shifting Rules," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 25(2), pages 197-214, Summer.
    3. Hersch, Philip L, 1990. "Indemnity, Settlement, and Litigation: Comment and Extension," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(1), pages 235-241, January.
    4. Michael R. Baye & Dan Kovenock & Casper G. Vries, 2005. "Comparative Analysis of Litigation Systems: An Auction-Theoretic Approach," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(505), pages 583-601, July.
    5. Hause, John C, 1989. "Indemnity, Settlement, and Litigation, or I'll Be Suing You," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 18(1), pages 157-179, January.
    6. Hughes, James W & Snyder, Edward A, 1995. "Litigation and Settlement under the English and American Rules: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 38(1), pages 225-250, April.
    7. Snyder, Edward A & Hughes, James W, 1990. "The English Rule for Allocating Legal Costs: Evidence Confronts Theory," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 6(2), pages 345-380, Fall.
    8. William M. Landes, 1974. "An Economic Analysis of the Courts," NBER Chapters, in: Essays in the Economics of Crime and Punishment, pages 164-214, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Jue-Shyan Wang, 2007. "Fee-Shifting Rules in Litigation with Contingency Fees," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 23(3), pages 519-546, October.
    10. Cooter, Robert D & Rubinfeld, Daniel L, 1989. "Economic Analysis of Legal Disputes and Their Resolution," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 27(3), pages 1067-1097, September.
    11. Katz, Avery, 1987. "Measuring the Demand for Litigation: Is the English Rule Really Cheaper?," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 3(2), pages 143-176, Fall.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Doménech-Pascual, Gabriel & Martínez-Matute, Marta & Mora-Sanguinetti, Juan S., 2021. "Do fee-shifting rules affect plaintiffs’ win rates? A theoretical and empirical analysis," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    2. Ayouni, Mehdi & Friehe, Tim & Gabuthy, Yannick, 2020. "Opting for the English rule: On the contractual re-allocation of legal fees," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).

    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. Schwab, Christian & Tang, Hin-Yue Benny, 2011. "Die Steuerungswirkungen unterschiedlicher Prozesskostenregelungen: Ein Überblick zum Stand von Theorie und Empirie [The economic effects of alternative fee shifting rules: A review of the theoretic," MPRA Paper 32746, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Baptiste Massenot & Maria Maraki & Christian Thoeni, 2016. "Legal compliance and litigation spending under the English and American rule: Experimental evidence," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 16.19, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    3. Michael R. Baye & Dan Kovenock & Casper G. Vries, 2005. "Comparative Analysis of Litigation Systems: An Auction-Theoretic Approach," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(505), pages 583-601, July.
    4. Wladislaw Mill & Jonathan Staebler, 2023. "Spite in Litigation," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2023_401, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    5. Doménech-Pascual, Gabriel & Martínez-Matute, Marta & Mora-Sanguinetti, Juan S., 2021. "Do fee-shifting rules affect plaintiffs’ win rates? A theoretical and empirical analysis," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    6. Steven Shavell, 2003. "Economic Analysis of Litigation and the Legal Process," NBER Working Papers 9697, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Peter Van Wijck & Ben Van Velthoven, 2000. "An Economic Analysis of the American and the Continental Rule for Allocating Legal Costs," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 9(2), pages 115-125, March.
    8. Virginia Rosales-López, 2008. "Economics of court performance: an empirical analysis," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 231-251, June.
    9. Carbonara Emanuela & Parisi Francesco & von Wangenheim Georg, 2015. "Rent-Seeking and Litigation: The Hidden Virtues of Limited Fee Shifting," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 11(2), pages 113-148, July.
    10. Echazu, Luciana & Garoupa, Nuno, 2012. "Why not adopt a loser-pays-all rule in criminal litigation?," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 233-241.
    11. J.J. Prescott & Kathryn E. Spier & Albert Yoon, 2014. "Trial and Settlement: A Study of High-Low Agreements," NBER Working Papers 19873, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Ben Chen & Jose A. Rodrigues Neto, 2017. "Emotions in Civil Litigation," ANU Working Papers in Economics and Econometrics 2017-653, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics.
    13. Beckner, Clinton III & Katz, Avery, 1995. "The incentive effects of litigation fee shifting when legal standards are uncertain," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 205-224, June.
    14. 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.
    15. Dari-Mattiacci, Giuseppe & Saraceno, Margherita, 2020. "Fee shifting and accuracy in adjudication," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    16. Todd L Cherry & Stephen J Cotten, 2012. "Environmental conflicts with reimbursement: experimental evidence," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(4), pages 3224-3232.
    17. Luca Anderlini & Leonardo Felli & Giovanni Immordino, 2019. "Costly Pretrial Agreements," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 48(1), pages 159-188.
    18. Reiko Aoki & Jin-Li Hu, 1996. "Allocation of Legal Costs and Patent Litigation: A Cooperative Game Approach," Industrial Organization 9612001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. J.J. Prescott & Kathryn E. Spier & Albert Yoon, 2014. "Trial and Settlement: A Study of High-Low Agreements," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 57(3), pages 699-746.
    20. Daniela Marchesi, 2007. "The Rule Incentives that Rule Civil Justice," ISAE Working Papers 85, ISTAT - Italian National Institute of Statistics - (Rome, ITALY).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Fee shifting; American rule; English rule; Winner rule; Opt-out provision; K40; K41;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K40 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - General
    • K41 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Litigation Process

    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:kap:ejlwec:v:37:y:2014:i:2:p:299-324. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.