Law Commons^™

Saliency, Anchors & Frames: A Multicomponent Damages Experiment, Bernard Chao

Michigan Technology Law Review

Modern technology products contain thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of different features. Nonetheless, when electronics manufacturers are sued for patent infringement, these suits typically accuse only one feature, or in more complex suits, a handful of features, of actual patent infringement. But damages verdicts often do not reflect the relatively small contribution an individual patent makes to an infringing product. One study observed that verdicts in these types of cases average 9.98% of the price of the entire product. While both courts and commentators have blamed the law of patent damages, the role cognitive biases play in these outsized damages …

Blackness As Character Evidence, Mikah K. Thompson

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Federal Rule of Evidence 404 severely limits the government’s ability to offer evidence of a defendant’s character trait of violence to prove action in conformity with that trait on the occasion in question. The Rule states that such character evidence is generally inadmissible when offered to prove propensity. The Rule also allows the government to offer evidence of an alleged victim’s character for peacefulness in homicide cases where the defendant asserts the self-defense privilege. Although criminal defendants may offer character evidence under limited circumstances, Rule 404 creates a significant disincentive for doing so. Where a defendant offers evidence of an …

The Influence Of Arbitrator Background And Representation On Arbitration Outcomes, Adam C. Pritchard, Stephen J. Choi, Jill E. Fisch

Articles

We study the role of arbitrator background in securities arbitration. We find that several aspects of arbitrator background are correlated with arbitration outcomes. Specifically, industry experience, prior experience as a regulator, and status as a professional or retired arbitrator are correlated with statistically significant differences in arbitration awards. The impact of these characteristics is affected by whether the arbitrator in question serves as the panel chair and by whether the parties to the arbitration are represented by counsel. Our findings offer some preliminary insights into the debate over possible arbitrator bias. On the one hand, they suggest that the party …

Doctors & Juries, Philip G. Peters Jr.

Michigan Law Review

Physicians widely believe that jury verdicts are unfair. This Article tests that assumption by synthesizing three decades of jury research. Contrary to popular belief the data show that juries consistently sympathize more with doctors who are sued than with patients who sue them. Physicians win roughly half of the cases that expert reviewers believe physicians should lose and nearly all of the cases that experts feel physicians should win. Defendants and their hired experts, it turns out, are more successful than plaintiffs and their hired experts at persuading juries to reach verdicts contrary to the opinions of independent reviewers.

Expert Information And Expert Evidence: A Preliminary Taxonomy, Samuel R. Gross, Jennifer L. Mnookin

Articles

Federal Rule of Evidence 702 speaks in very general terms. It governs every situation in which "scientific, technical or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact," and provides that, in that situation, "a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, or education, may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or otherwise . . . .' In 2000, following a trio of Supreme Court cases interpreting Rule 702, the Rule was amended to include a third requirement, in addition to the helpfulness of the testimony and the qualifications of the witness: reliability. Under Rule 702 …

Judges, Juries, And Patent Cases - An Emprical Peek Inside The Black Box, Kimberly A. Moore

Michigan Law Review

The frequency with which juries participate in patent litigation has skyrocketed recently. At the same time, there is a popular perception that the increasing complexity of technology being patented (especially in the electronic, computer software, biological and chemical fields) has made patent trials extremely difficult for lay juries to understand. These developments have sparked extensive scholarly debate and increasing skepticism regarding the role of juries in patent cases. Juries have participated in some aspects of patent litigation since the enactment of the first patent statute in 1790, which provided for "such damages as shall be assessed by a jury." The …

"Countering Stereotypes." Review Of Medical Malpractice And The American Jury: Confronting The Myths About Jury Incompetence, Deep Pockets, And Outrageous Damage Awards, By N. Vidmar, Samuel R. Gross

Reviews

The story of The Medical Malpractice Trial has a place in popular American legal culture, somewhere on the shelf with Killers Who Got Off on Technicalities. The plot is simple and tragic. The protagonist is the Doctor, a good man with a flaw: He tries too hard. In the process, he makes an innocent mistake or believes he can prevent the unpreventable. In any event, he fails and the Patient dies or is permanently injured. For this unintentional error the Doctor is crucified, by the vengeful anger of the Patient or her survivors, the avarice of the plaintiffs' lawyer, the …

Is Title Vi A Magic Bullet? Environmental Racism In The Context Of Political-Economic Processes And Imperatives, Steven A. Light, Kathryn R.L. Rand

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article examines avenues of redress and pollution prevention for impoverished people of color that flow from Title VI litigation strategies within the larger context of the environmental justice movement. Environmental justice issues can serve as tools with which to question status quo distributive policymaking processes and outcomes. Specifically, this Article concerns itself with practical routes toward increasing distributive justice and democratic efficacy.

Discovery And Presentation Of Evidence In Adversary And Nonadversary Proceedings, E. Allan Lind, John Thibaut, Laurens Walker

Michigan Law Review

In order to evaluate fully the advantage claimed for the adversary model we sought to add a third element that would test the hypothesis under a variety of conditions. The degree to which the evidence discovered in a case favors one party at the expense of another appeared to meet this criterion. This fact-distribution element is a pervasive condition of legal conflict resolution that, intuition suggests, may significantly influence information search and transmission. Further, this variable could be easily and accurately controlled by regulating the flow of favorable information acquired by the subjects during the experiment.

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