IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jleorg/v29y2013i4p898-929.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Litigating Toward Settlement

Author

Listed:
  • Christina L. Boyd
  • David A. Hoffman

Abstract

Civil litigation typically ends when the parties compromise. While existing theories of settlement primarily focus on information exchange, we instead examine how motion practice, especially nondiscovery motions, can substantially shape parties' knowledge about their cases and thereby influence the timing of settlement. Using docket-level federal district court data, we find a number of strong effects regarding how motions can influence this process: including that the filing of a motion significantly speeds case settlement; that granted motions are more immediately critical to settlement timing than motions denied; and that plaintiff victories have a stronger effect than defendant victories. These results provide a uniquely detailed look at the mechanism of compromise via information exchange and motion practice in litigation while simultaneously yielding evidence that this effect goes well beyond the traditionally studied discovery process. (JEL C00, K00, K10, K41). The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Christina L. Boyd & David A. Hoffman, 2013. "Litigating Toward Settlement," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 29(4), pages 898-929, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:29:y:2013:i:4:p:898-929
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jleo/ews021
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

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

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Haus, Axel & Juranek, Steffen, 2018. "Non-practicing entities: Enforcement specialists?," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 38-49.
    2. Chen, Daniel L. & Frankenreiter, Jens & Yeh, Susan, 2016. "Judicial Compliance in District Courts," TSE Working Papers 16-715, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    3. Samantha Bielen & Wim Marneffe & Peter Grajzl & Valentina Dimitrova-Grajzl, 2018. "The Duration of Judicial Deliberation: Evidence from Belgium," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 174(2), pages 303-333, June.
    4. Chen, Daniel L., 2023. "Judicial compliance in district courts," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    5. Peter Grajzl & Katarina Zajc, 2017. "Litigation and the timing of settlement: evidence from commercial disputes," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 44(2), pages 287-319, October.
    6. Jennifer K. Robbennolt & Jessica Bregant & Verity Winship, 2023. "Settlement schemas: How laypeople understand civil settlement," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 20(3), pages 488-533, September.
    7. Bielen, Samantha & Grajzl, Peter & Marneffe, Wim, 2017. "Procedural events, judge characteristics, and the timing of settlement," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 97-110.
    8. Marilene Lorizio & Antonia Rosa Gurrieri, 2017. "Resilient Smes, Institutions And Justice. Evidence In Italy," Review of Economic and Business Studies, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, issue 20, pages 131-155, December.
    9. Duy Vu & Michele Pezzoni & Duc Lam Nguyen, 2021. "Arbitrator teams and dispute resolution performance: an empirical analysis," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 51(2), pages 347-381, April.
    10. Samantha Bielen & Peter Grajzl & Wim Marneffe, 2017. "Understanding the Time to Court Case Resolution: A Competing Risks Analysis Using Belgian Data," CESifo Working Paper Series 6450, CESifo.
    11. Castelliano, Caio & Grajzl, Peter & Watanabe, Eduardo, 2021. "How has the Covid19 pandemic impacted the courts of law? Evidence from Brazil," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C00 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - General - - - General
    • K00 - Law and Economics - - General - - - General (including Data Sources and Description)
    • K10 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - General (Constitutional Law)
    • 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:oup:jleorg:v:29:y:2013:i:4:p:898-929. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/jleo .

    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.