Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 7 of 7
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Economics Of Third-Party Financed Litigation, Keith N. Hylton
The Economics Of Third-Party Financed Litigation, Keith N. Hylton
Faculty Scholarship
This paper examines the law and economics of third-party financed litigation. I explore the conditions under which a system of third-party financiers and litigators can enhance social welfare, and the conditions under which it is likely to reduce social welfare. Among the applications I consider are the sale of legal rights (such as contingent tort claims) to insurers, to patent trolls, and to financiers generally
A Financial Economic Theory Of Punitive Damages, Robert J. Rhee
A Financial Economic Theory Of Punitive Damages, Robert J. Rhee
Robert Rhee
This Article provides a financial economic theory of punitive damages. The core problem, as the Supreme Court acknowledged in Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, is not the systemic amount of punitive damages in the tort system; rather, it is the risk of outlier outcomes. Low frequency, high severity awards are unpredictable, cause financial distress, and beget social cost. By focusing only on offsetting escaped liability, the standard law and economics theory fails to account for the core problem of variance. This Article provides a risk arbitrage analysis of the relationship between variance, litigation valuation, and optimal deterrence. Starting with settlement …
Casev. Pigou: A Still Difficult Debate, Enrico Baffi
Casev. Pigou: A Still Difficult Debate, Enrico Baffi
enrico baffi
This paper examine the positions of Coase and Pigou about the problem of the externalities. From the reading of their most two important works it appears that Coase has a more relevant preference for a evaluation of efficiency at the total, while Pigou, with some exception, is convinced that is possible to reach marginal efficiency through taxes or compensation. It’s interesting that Coase, who has elaborated the famous theorem, is convinced that is not important to reach the efficiency at the margin every time and that sometimes is necessary a valuation at the total, that tells us which solution is …
The “Ensuing Loss” Clause In Insurance Policies: The Forgotten And Misunderstood Antidote To Anti-Concurrent Causation Exclusions, Chris French
Journal Articles
As a result of the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco which destroyed the city, a clause known as the “ensuing loss” clause was created to address concurrent causation situations in which a loss follows both a covered peril and an excluded peril. Ensuing loss clauses appear in the exclusions section of such policies and in essence they provide that coverage for a loss caused by an excluded peril is nonetheless covered if the loss “ensues” from a covered peril. Today, ensuing loss clauses are found in “all risk” property and homeowners policies, which cover all losses except for …
The Hedonic Impact Of Stand-Alone Emotional Harms: An Analysis Of Survey Data, David E. Depianto
The Hedonic Impact Of Stand-Alone Emotional Harms: An Analysis Of Survey Data, David E. Depianto
David E. DePianto
This paper employs survey data on subjective well-being and a battery of self-assessed health measures to estimate the hedonic impact of emotional health, as decoupled from its physical counterpart. The disaggregation of global health into physical and emotional components is done with a parochial eye toward tort law, which has historically drawn a distinction between physical and emotional harms, limiting recovery on the latter — particularly “stand-alone” emotional harms —through various common law doctrines. The results of three sets of regression analyses suggest that a range of potentially inactionable emotional conditions, including emotional conditions with no concomitant physical manifestations, exert …
The “Ensuing Loss” Clause In Insurance Policies: The Forgotten And Misunderstood Antidote To Anti-Concurrent Causation Exclusions, Chris French
Christopher C. French
As a result of the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco which destroyed the city, a clause known as the “ensuing loss” clause was created to address concurrent causation situations in which a loss follows both a covered peril and an excluded peril. Ensuing loss clauses appear in the exclusions section of such policies and in essence they provide that coverage for a loss caused by an excluded peril is nonetheless covered if the loss “ensues” from a covered peril. Today, ensuing loss clauses are found in “all risk” property and homeowners policies, which cover all losses except for …
The “Non-Cumulation Clause”: An “Other Insurance” Clause By Another Name, Chris French
The “Non-Cumulation Clause”: An “Other Insurance” Clause By Another Name, Chris French
Christopher C. French
How long-tail liability claims such as asbestos bodily injury claims and environmental property damage claims are allocated among multiple triggered policy years can result in the shifting of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars from one party to another. In recent years, insurers have argued that clauses commonly titled, “Prior Insurance and Non-Cumulation of Liability” (referred to herein as “Non-Cumulation Clauses”), which are found in commercial liability policies, should be applied to reduce or eliminate their coverage responsibilities for long-tail liability claims by shifting their coverage responsibilities to insurers that issued policies in earlier policy years. The insurers’ argument …