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Soft Regulators, Tough Judges, Gerrit De Geest, Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci
Soft Regulators, Tough Judges, Gerrit De Geest, Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci
George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series
Judges have a tendency to be more demanding than regulators. In the United States, a majority of the courts has adopted the rule that the unexcused violation of a statutory standard is negligence per se. However, the converse does not hold: compliance with regulation does not relieve the injurer of tort liability. In most European legal systems, the outcome is similar. We use a framework in which, on the one hand, the effects of tort law are undermined by insolvency and evidence problems and, on the other hand, regulation is expensive in terms of monitoring and information gathering. We show …
Disappearing Defendants V. Judgment Proof Injurers: Upgrading The Theory Of Tort Law Failures, Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci, Barbara Mangan
Disappearing Defendants V. Judgment Proof Injurers: Upgrading The Theory Of Tort Law Failures, Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci, Barbara Mangan
George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series
Do injurers’ insolvency and victims’ reluctance to sue affect accident prevention in the same way? Are these circumstances less of a problem under the negligence rule than under strict liability? We argue, contrary to the literature, that the answer is, in most cases, negative and make three main points. First, the judgment proof problem and the disappearing defendant problem are shown to have different effects on injurers’ behavior and hence yield dissimilar levels of social welfare. Second, when these two problems occur simultaneously they may have offsetting effects. Third, the negligence rule is superior to strict liability only under some …