Law Commons^™

Accounting For Awards: An Examination Of Juror Reasoning Behind Pain And Suffering Damage Award Decisions, Krystia Reed, Valerie P. Hans, Valerie F. Reyna

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

What do civil jurors think about when they are asked to make damage award decisions? Given the secrecy of the jury deliberation process, often we are unaware of jurors' thought processes. This Article presents the results from three studies in which mock jurors explained the reasoning behind their damage awards for pain and suffering. We highlight the most common explanations and distinguish between reasons justifying high and low pain and suffering awards. We conclude with a discussion for what this means for attorneys during trial.

Newsroom: Logan On Trump And Libel Law 01-03-2017, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Trial And Settlement: A Study Of High-Low Agreements, J. J. Prescott, Kathryn E. Spier, Albert Yoon

Articles

This article presents the first systematic theoretical and empirical study of highlow agreements in civil litigation. A high-low agreement is a private contract that, if signed by litigants before trial, constrains any plaintiff’s recovery to a specified range. In our theoretical model, trial is both costly and risky. When litigants have divergent subjective beliefs and are mutually optimistic about their trial prospects, cases may fail to settle. In these cases, high-low agreements can be in litigants’ mutual interest because they limit the risk of outlier awards while still allowing mutually beneficial speculation. Using claims data from a national insurance company, …

Tort As A Substitute For Revenge, Scott Hershovitz

Book Chapters

In 1872, the Supreme Court of Illinois decided a case called Alcorn v Mitchell. It was not the first litigation between the parties. Some years earlier, Alcorn had sued Mitchell for trespass. That suit did not go well, and at the close of the trial, just after the court adjourned, Alcorn spit in Mitchell’s face. Mitchell then turned the tables and sued Alcorn for battery. He won a judgment for $1,000, which was a lot of money back then—depending on how you think about the change in value of money over time, the present day equivalent would range from just …

Tort Damages And The New Science Of Happiness, Rick Swedloff, Peter H. Huang

Publications

The happiness revolution is coming to legal scholarship. Based on empirical data about the how and why of positive emotions, legal scholars are beginning to suggest reforms to legal institutions. In this article we aim to redirect and slow down this revolution.

One of their first targets of these legal hedonists is the jury system for tort damages. In several recent articles, scholars have concluded that early findings about hedonic adaptation and affective forecasting undermine tort awards for pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life, and other non-economic damages. In the shadow of a broader debate about …

Hedonic Damages, Hedonic Adaptation, And Disability, Samuel R. Bagenstos, Margo Schlanger

Articles

A number of states recognize hedonic damages as a separate category of recovery in tort and tort-like actions. Others consider lost enjoyment of life as an aspect of what are sometimes termed "disability" damages-damages for physical or mental impairment. Many other states permit juries to take account of lost enjoyment of life in setting compensation for pain and suffering or other forms of general damages. In all these jurisdictions, disability has loomed large. And the (explicit or implicit) view of disability is often one of tragic dependency and helplessness. As we show in Part I below, lawyers seeking hedonic damages …

Juries, Hindsight, And Punitive Damages Awards: Reply To Richard Lempert, W. Kip Viscusi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Richard Lempert, a Professor of Law and Sociology at the University of Michigan criticized our recent article on judge and jury performance of a punitive damage judgment task, calling it a "failure of a social science case for change." Professor Lempert's depiction of our research is confusing and incorrect. However, because we believe a reading of only the Lempert critique can lead to a substantial misunderstanding of our research and its implications, we have written a reply.

Why Civil Cases Go To Trial: Strategic Bargaining And The Desire For Vindication, Samuel R. Gross, Kent D. Syverud

Articles

When negotiations break down and a dispute cannot be settled, attorneys commonly blame their adversaries, often questioning their ethics or their judgment. After interviewing many attorneys, we have come to believe much of the criticism is directed at strategic moves in negotiation. But strategic ploys are not the only reason dispute resolution fails. Rather, our research also suggest that a genuine desire for vindication through trial or other formal process may be very significant in some types of cases where bargaining breaks down.

Going To Trial: A Rare Throw Of The Die, Samuel R. Gross, Kent D. Syverud

Articles

If it is true, as we often hear, that we are one of the most litigious societies on earth, it is because of our propensity to sue, not our affinity for trials. Of the hundreds of thousands of civil lawsuits that are filed each year in America, the great majority are settled; of those that are not settled, most are ultimately dismissed by the plaintiffs or by the courts; only a few percent are tried to a jury or a judge. This is no accident. We prefer settlements and have designed a system of civil justice that embodies and expresses …

Don't Try: Civil Jury Verdicts In A System Geared To Settlement, Samuel R. Gross, Kent D. Syverud

Articles

If it is true, as we often hear, that we are one of the most litigious societies on earth, it is because of our propensity to sue, not our affinity for trials. Of the hundreds of thousands of civil lawsuits that are filed each year in America, the great majority are settled; of those that are not settled, most are ultimately dismissed by the plaintiffs or by the courts; only a few percent are tried to a jury or a judge. This is no accident. We prefer settlements and have designed a system of civil justice that embodies and expresses …