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Full-Text Articles in Law
A Financial Economic Theory Of Punitive Damages, Robert J. Rhee
A Financial Economic Theory Of Punitive Damages, Robert J. Rhee
Michigan Law Review
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 …
Bargaining In The Shadow Of Rate-Setting Courts, Daniel A. Crane
Bargaining In The Shadow Of Rate-Setting Courts, Daniel A. Crane
Articles
Judges will tell you that they are comparatively poor rate regulators. The specialized, technical competence and supervisory capacity that public utilities commissions enjoy are usually absent from judicial chambers. Nonetheless, when granting antitrust remedies-particularly remedies for monopolistic abuse of intellectual property-courts sometimes purport to act as rate regulators for the licensing or sale of the defendant's assets. At the outset, we should distinguish between two forms ofjudicial rate setting. In one form, a court (or the FTC in its adjudicative capacity) grants a compulsory license and sets a specific rate as part of a final judgment or an order. The …
Corporate Judgement Proofing: A Response To Lynn Lopucki's 'The Death Of Liability', James J. White
Corporate Judgement Proofing: A Response To Lynn Lopucki's 'The Death Of Liability', James J. White
Articles
In "The Death of Liability" Professor Lynn M. LoPucki argues that American businesses are rendering themselves judgment proof.- Using the metaphor of a poker game, Professor LoPucki claims American businesses are increasingly able to participate in the poker game without putting "chips in the pot." He argues that it has become easier for American companies to play the game without having chips in the pot because of the ease with which a modern debtor can grant secured credit, because of the growth of the peculiar form of sale known as asset securitization, because foreign havens for secreting assets are now …
An Intent-Based Approach To The Acceptance Of Benefits Doctrine In The Federal Courts, Benson K. Friedman
An Intent-Based Approach To The Acceptance Of Benefits Doctrine In The Federal Courts, Benson K. Friedman
Michigan Law Review
This Note discusses the question of when federal courts should allow a party who accepts payment of a judgment subsequently to appeal the deficiency of the award. Part I examines the discrepancies currently existing in the acceptance of benefits doctrine as applied by the federal courts. Part II analogizes this issue to the law of implied-in-fact contracts and argues that accepting the benefits of a judgment should not prevent an appeal unless circumstances clearly indicate a mutual intent to settle all claims and thereby terminate litigation. Part III contends that, under the doctrine expressed in Erie Railroad v. Tompkins, …
The Recognition Of Judgments In The European Community: The Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Of The Brussels Convention, Robert C. Reuland
The Recognition Of Judgments In The European Community: The Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Of The Brussels Convention, Robert C. Reuland
Michigan Journal of International Law
This article is directed at two objectives. It will first provide, in Part I, an outline of the history of the Brussels Convention from its inception to the present day. It will examine the growth of the Convention from a vague undertaking of the six original Member States of the EC, through various treaties of accession and the 1988 Lugano Convention with the EFTA, and finally to the text currently in force. Part II will discuss the nature of the Convention and the philosophy behind it. The second purpose of this article is a more pragmatic one: to provide the …
Coordinated Transnational Interaction In Civil Litigation And Arbitration, Peter F. Schlosser
Coordinated Transnational Interaction In Civil Litigation And Arbitration, Peter F. Schlosser
Michigan Journal of International Law
About fifteen years ago, an English shipowner chartered his vessel, the Mareva, to time charterers. After a while, the charterers discontinued payment on the charter and the shipowner instituted court proceedings against them. The plaintiff, concerned about the ability and willingness of the defendants to satisfy an expected judgment, simultaneously applied for a preliminary injunction restraining the defendants from disposing of a subcharter which had been paid into their London bank account. The injunction was granted. Since then, injunctions of this kind have been denominated "Mareva injunctions," although it was the second, rather than the first, case where such an …
Where The Money Is: Remedies To Finance Compliance With Strict Structural Injunctions, James M. Hirschhorn
Where The Money Is: Remedies To Finance Compliance With Strict Structural Injunctions, James M. Hirschhorn
Michigan Law Review
This Article examines the formal powers that are available to the federal courts to meet this situation. Part I places the problem in perspective, describing the party structure of the institutional reform decree, the :financial burdens it places on the government defendants, and the relationship of these defendants to the fiscal authorities. Part II surveys the coercive powers historically available to the federal courts sitting in equity. Part III discusses the use of these devices against government defendants who claim financial impossibility. It emphasizes the limited recognition of impossibility, the power to compel the defendants to use available resources efficiently …
Res Judicata And Multi-State Integration, Lea Brilmayer
Res Judicata And Multi-State Integration, Lea Brilmayer
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Civil Judgment Recognition and the Integration of Multiple-State Associations: Central America, the United States of America, and the European Economic Community by Robert C. Casad
Enforcement Of Money Judgments In Early American History, Stefan A. Riesenfeld
Enforcement Of Money Judgments In Early American History, Stefan A. Riesenfeld
Michigan Law Review
The history of the enforcement of money judgments in the United States during the colonial period and the early days of statehood has never been explored in depth. The only modern account is the brief discussion in R. Millar's Civil Procedure of the Trial Court in Historical Perspective. Yet, in view of the recent and long overdue concern with the protection of debtors against unnecessarily harsh and oppressive direct collection remedies, a study of the early efforts designed to shield debtors from excessive and wasteful deprivations of their property is not without interest, especially as the record is rich …
Res Judicata/Preclusion By Judgment: The Law Applied In Federal Courts, Allan D. Vestal
Res Judicata/Preclusion By Judgment: The Law Applied In Federal Courts, Allan D. Vestal
Michigan Law Review
Preclusion is not a simple principle; it is a multifaceted concept affected by a number of relevant variables. A discussion of the principles is meaningful only if specific situations are discussed; to talk in generalities is not profitable. Therefore, for the sake of clarity, this Article will consider several typical situations.
Unrecognized Government Or State In English And American Law (Part 2), Edwin D. Dickinson
Unrecognized Government Or State In English And American Law (Part 2), Edwin D. Dickinson
Articles
PROBABLY no one in the British Empire or the United States would question the doctrine that it belongs exclusively to the political departments to recognize new governments or states. The difficulties involved are those which arise in the application of a doctrine so broadly stated. Not every situation involving an unrecognized government or state requires the decision of a question of recognition. If the decision of a political question is not involved, then it is entirely proper for the courts to take cognizance of a mere de facto government or state. In what situations may the courts appropriately take account …
Declaratory Judgments, Edson R. Sunderland
Declaratory Judgments, Edson R. Sunderland
Articles
The Connecticut legislature passed an act in 1921 authorizing courts to make binding declarations of rights. The act was attacked as unconstitutional on the same ground raised by the supreme court of Michigan against the Michigan Declaratory Judgment Act in the case of Anway v. Railway Co., 211 Mich. 592, 12 A. L. R. 26i namely, that declaring rights was not a judicial function. But the Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut sustdined the act as in no way contravening the constitution.
Unrecognized Government Or State In English And American Law (Part 1), Edwin D. Dickinson
Unrecognized Government Or State In English And American Law (Part 1), Edwin D. Dickinson
Articles
From the decision of this novel case, reported as Pelzer v. United Dredging Co., we may infer that the New York courts regard unrecognized Mexico as a sort of legal vacuum. In granting the corporation's motion for judgment on the pleadings, the Supreme Court said: "The administratrix plaintiff is an officer of a foreign court. It is syllogistically true that if the foreign court has no recognized power here she may not assert a right derived through her appointment therefrom. The Mexican government is not de facto here, since recognition alone can make it so. It may have all the …
Attorney's Lien For Services - Set-Off Of Judgments, Edson R. Sunderland
Attorney's Lien For Services - Set-Off Of Judgments, Edson R. Sunderland
Articles
Anglo-Saxon judges, as members of the legal profession, have shown an admirable freedom from professional bias and class selfishness in dealing with questions involving the rights and privileges of members of their profession. With every opportunity offered for treating lawyers as a favored class, they have been able to maintain a detached and objective attitude toward them. Indeed, the courts seem to have preferred to be charged with excessive severity in dealing with their brethren of the bar rather than give the slightest ground for suspicion that they were capitalizing their power in the interest of the legal fraternity.
Extraterritorial Effect Of The Equitable Decree, Willard T. Barbour
Extraterritorial Effect Of The Equitable Decree, Willard T. Barbour
Articles
ANYONE whom the study of equity has led into the by-paths of V Canon Law will recall that the Sext ends with a splendid array of imposing maxims, not improbably the source of the Latin maxims with which every lawyer is familiar. The inveterate habit formed by the ecclesiastics of expressing a legal principle in a short and crisp formula persisted when they came into the courts of law and is peculiarly in evidence among the chancellors of the fifteenth century. What may at first have been merely casual became through repetition a habit and the result has been to …
A New Function For Courts - Declaring The Rights Of Parties, Edson R. Sunderland
A New Function For Courts - Declaring The Rights Of Parties, Edson R. Sunderland
Articles
In a recent opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States Justice Holmes makes this interesting observation:- "The foundation of jurisdiction is physical power, although in civilized times it is not necessary to maintain that power throughout proceedings properly begun." Paraphrased, the statement comes to this: In early times the basis of jurisdiction is the existence and the constant assertion of physical power over the parties to the action, but as civilization advances the mere existence of such power tends to make its exercise less and less essential.
Coercing A State To Pay A Judgement Virginia V West Virginia, Thomas Reed Powell
Coercing A State To Pay A Judgement Virginia V West Virginia, Thomas Reed Powell
Michigan Law Review
The Eleventh Amendment to the Federal Constitution postponed for over a century the settlement of the question whether a state of the United States can be coerced to pay a money judgment rendered against it in the Supreme Court of the United States. This it did by postponing the rendition of money judgments against a state. In 1793, it will be remembered, Chisholm v. Georgi4 had held that the provisions of Article III of the Constitution, extending the federal judicial power "to controversies * * * between a state and citizens of another state," and giving the Supreme Court original …
Power Of The U.S. Supreme Court To Enforce Judgments Against States, Henry M. Bates
Power Of The U.S. Supreme Court To Enforce Judgments Against States, Henry M. Bates
Articles
Four and one-half centuries later the "sovereign state" of Virginia sued the "sovereign state" of West Virginia to recover a sum of money alleged to be due upon the agreement of West Virginia to assume its proportionate share of the debt of the old state of Virginia. The suit was brought in the Supreme Court of the United States, which after prolonged consideration rendered judgment for the plaintiff. No execution or other compulsory process was issued, however. But now after delays for various reasons and pretexts urged by West Virginia the court is compelled to face the problem of what …
A Modern Evolution In Remedial Rights - The Declaratory Judgment, Edson R. Sunderland
A Modern Evolution In Remedial Rights - The Declaratory Judgment, Edson R. Sunderland
Articles
In early times the basis of jurisdiction is the existence and the constant assertion of physical power over the parties to the action, but as civilization advances the mere existence of such power tends to make its exercise less and less essential. If this is true, it must be because there is something in civilization itself which diminishes the necessity for a resort to actual force in sustaining the judgments of courts. And it is quite clear that civilization does supply an element which is theoretically capable of entirely supplanting the exercise of force in the assertion of jurisdiction. This …
Recovery Of Money Paid Under Duress Of Legal Proceedings In Michigan, Edgar N. Durfee
Recovery Of Money Paid Under Duress Of Legal Proceedings In Michigan, Edgar N. Durfee
Articles
THE case of Welch v. Beeching, recently decided by the Supreme Court of Michigan, raises puzzling problems conconcerning the recovery of money paid under pressure of legal proceedings. It is the purpose of this paper to give that case a more adequate setting, in relation to the whole field of law to which it pertains, than was provided by the brief opinion of the court. We shall not attempt to exhaust the authorities, nor to present a rounded treatment of the whole subject touched upon.
The Sheriff's Return, Edson R. Sunderland
The Sheriff's Return, Edson R. Sunderland
Articles
When William the Conqueror found himself military master of Britain, he was confronted by a governmental problem quite different from that which has usually accompanied foreign conquest. He did not subdue a nation already organized, substituting his power for that of its former ruler in the conventional way of conquerors. Britain was a geographical unit but politically and socially it was a congeries of loosely related communities. The natural law of survival of the fittest normally operates upon peoples as upon individuals, and develops centralized power as a means of self-preservation. But Britain had a substitute for this. The sheltering …
Is A Judgment Open To Collateral Attack If Rendered Without Written Pleadings As Required By Statute, Or If The Writings Do Not Comply With The Statutory Requirements?, John R. Rood
Articles
It is believed that no good reason can be assigned for answering the above question in the affirmative. Certainly none has yet been discovered in a careful search of the cases involving the point. And yet the assurance and unanimity with which lawyers and judges give the affirmative answer to it on first thought is indeed remarkable. For instance, Mr. Justice FIELD in speaking for the Supreme Court of the United States, on the question as to whether a judgment is subject to collateral attack if one served with process is not permitted to make any defense when he appears …
Attachments On Unliquidated Demands, John R. Rood
Attachments On Unliquidated Demands, John R. Rood
Articles
If the creditor should not have the aid of attachment to recover on unliquidated demands, why not? It is true that attachment as a security for the satisfaction of the judgment that may be recovered in an action pending or just commenced was unknown to the general common law of England, and existed only in a restricted form as a special custom of London and other places in the form of garnishment till it was introduced into the New England colonies by an early statute of Massachusetts, whence its utility commended it so that it was soon adopted in all …
The Remedies For The Collection Of Judgments Against Debtors Who Are Residents Or Property Holders In Another State, Or Within The British Dominions, Thomas M. Cooley
The Remedies For The Collection Of Judgments Against Debtors Who Are Residents Or Property Holders In Another State, Or Within The British Dominions, Thomas M. Cooley
Articles
Whenever a party who has obtained a judgment in one state or county has occasion to take proceedings for its enforcement in another, he finds-perhaps to his surprise-that his judgment as such has no extra-territorial force, but that in other jurisdictions it is merely evidence of a settled demand, upon which judgment must be obtained in a new suit before there can be process for its enforcement. A creditor cannot, for example, upon a judgment recovered in New York, have an execution in Pennsylvania; for courts issue executions only upon their own judgments; and while it would no doubt be …