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Hedonic Adaptation And The Settlement Of Civil Lawsuits, John Bronsteen, Christopher J, Buccafusco, Jonathan S. Masur
Hedonic Adaptation And The Settlement Of Civil Lawsuits, John Bronsteen, Christopher J, Buccafusco, Jonathan S. Masur
Faculty Scholarship
This Essay examines the burgeoning psychological literature on happiness and hedonic adaptation (a person's capacity to preserve or recapture her level of happiness by adjusting to changed circumstances), bringing this literature to bear on the probability of pretrial settlement in civil litigation. The existing economic and behavioral models of settlement are incomplete because they do not incorporate the effect of adaptation on the sum for which a plaintiff is willing to accept an offer. When an individual first suffers a serious injury, she will likely predict that the injury will greatly diminish her future happiness. However, during the time that …