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Assessing The Effects Of Case Characteristics And Settlement Forums On Dispute Outcomes And Compliance, Neil Vidmar
Assessing The Effects Of Case Characteristics And Settlement Forums On Dispute Outcomes And Compliance, Neil Vidmar
Faculty Scholarship
McEwen and Maiman (1986) have disagreed with my claim that the case characteristic of admitted liability explains more variability in dispute outcome and compliance than whether the case was resolved through a mediation or adjudication forum. Those authors reanalyzed some of my data from an Ontario small claims court and concluded that forum type is the stronger variable. I take issue with them on a number of conceptual and methodological points. In my own reanalysis of the Ontario data I am able to demonstrate statistically that admitted liability is the stronger predictor of outcomes. I also discuss why this should …
The Small Claims Court: A Reconceptualization Of Disputes And An Empirical Investigation, Neil Vidmar
The Small Claims Court: A Reconceptualization Of Disputes And An Empirical Investigation, Neil Vidmar
Faculty Scholarship
In this paper disputes are seen as varying along a dimension of admitted liability, that is, the extent to which defendants admit some obligation to plaintiffs; they may admit no liability, partial liability, or full liability. This conceptualization was used in an empirical study of a small claims court. The results paint a portrait of the court that is at variance with most of the previous literature. Consumer issues constitute a substantial portion of the court caseload. On average, defendants, including individual consumers, do well when they dispute claims. Among disputed cases, small rather than large businesses predominate. Prior literature …