Law Commons^™

Lawsuit Abandonment Options In Possibly Frivolous Litigation Games, Peter H. Huang

All Faculty Scholarship

This paper develops a new theory of possibly frivolous litigation by focusing on a plaintiff's options to unilaterally abandon a lawsuit. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a)(1)(i) and its various state law counterparts permit, under certain circumstances, a plaintiff to voluntarily dismiss her lawsuit without prejudice. This paper's options approach to litigation, including quite possibly, frivolous litigation is placed in the context of the literature of economic models about litigation in general and frivolous litigation in particular. This paper demonstrates that possibly frivolous lawsuits will be filed and settled when the values of a plaintiff's options to unilaterally abandon litigation …