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Exploding The Class Action Agency Costs Myth: The Social Utility Of Entrepreneurial Lawyers, Myriam E. Gilles, Gary B. Friedman
Exploding The Class Action Agency Costs Myth: The Social Utility Of Entrepreneurial Lawyers, Myriam E. Gilles, Gary B. Friedman
Articles
In this article, we challenge the traditional view that entrepreneurial plaintiffs' class action lawyers operating entirely according to their own economic self-interest serve no social utility, or worse yet, tremendous disutility. In seeking to counter this notion, we try to show that the agency costs problem long derided in class action practice is overblown: in the majority of small-claims class actions, there is no legitimate reason to care whether class members are being undercompensated (or compensated at all), nor any reason to worry that entrepreneurial lawyers are being overcompensated. Rather, we assert that the driving force behind class action practice …
Use It Or Pretenders Will Abuse It: The Importance Of Archival Legal Information, Theodore Eisenberg
Use It Or Pretenders Will Abuse It: The Importance Of Archival Legal Information, Theodore Eisenberg
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Archival information about the legal system should inform policymaking. Despite claims of soaring civil damages awards, modem historical data show no to little growth in tort awards and no real growth in punitive damages awards. The data also show a dramatic forty-year decline in trial rates from more than ten percent of case dispositions to less than two percent. The decline needs to be explained in part by using archival data. Contrary to perceptions underlying the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005, little systematic evidence exists that state and federal courts process class actions significantly different. These results contradict the …