Law Commons^™

Of Equal Rights And Half Wrongs, Gideon Parchomovsky, Peter Siegelman, Thel Steve

Peter Siegelman

With a tiny handful of exceptions, common law jurisprudence is predicated on a "winner-take-all" principle: The plaintiff either gets the entire entitlement at issue or collects nothing at all. Cases that split an entitlement between the two parties are exceedingly rare. While there may be sound reasons for the all-or-nothing rule, in this Article we argue that there is a limited but important set of property, torts, and contracts cases in which an equal division of an entitlement should be adopted. The common element in these cases is a windfall-a gain or loss that occurs despite the fact that no …