Legal Remedies Commons^™

Threatening An Irrational Breach Of Contract, Oren Bar-Gill, Omri Ben-Shahar

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When circumstances surrounding the contract change, a party might consider breach a more attractive option than performance. Threatening breach, this party may induce the other party to modify the original agreement. The contract law doctrine of modification determines whether and when these modifications are enforceable. To promote social welfare as well as the interests of the threatened party, the law should enforce modifications if and only if the modification demand is backed by a credible threat to breach. This paper argues that credibility is not a function of pecuniary interests alone. A decision to breach can be motivated also by …

An Autopsy Of The Structural Reform Injunction: Oops ... It's Still Moving, Myriam E. Gilles

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No abstract provided.

The Genie And The Bottle: Collateral Sources Under The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, Kenneth S. Abraham, Kyle D. Logue

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The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001 (the Fund) was part of legislation enacted just eleven days after the terrorist attacks of September 11th in the wake of extraordinary national loss. It is possible, therefore, that the Fund will always be considered an urgent and unique response to the unprecedented events of September 11th. On that view, the character of the Fund will have little longterm policy significance. It is equally possible, however, that the enactment of the Fund will prove to be a seminal moment in the history of tort and compensation law. The Fund adopts a new …

A Taxing Settlement, Hanoch Dagan, James J. White

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The following essay is based on the talk "Government, Citizens, and Injurious Industries: A Case Study of the Tobacco Litigation," delivered by Hanoch Dagan last May to the Detroit Chapter of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, and on the article "Governments, Citizens, and Injurious Industries," by Dagan and James J. White, '62, which appeared in 75.2 New York University Law Review 254-428 (May 2000). The authors hold conflicting view on the underlying issue of this topic: tobacco company product liability. Professor Dagan holds the position that tobacco companies are liable for harm done by their products; Professor …

The Stumbling Block: Freedom, Rationality, And Legal Scholarship, Jeanne L. Schroeder

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The article critiques the dominance of policy-oriented legal scholarship, particularly in law and economics, arguing that it oversimplifies human behavior by focusing on predictable, instrumental rationality. It advocates for a more balanced approach that incorporates jurisprudential, theoretical, and doctrinal scholarship, drawing on speculative theory from Continental philosophy and psychoanalysis to provide a richer understanding of rationality and human subjectivity. The author suggests that critical legal scholarship could be revitalized by engaging with thinkers like Kant, Hegel, and Lacan, who offer deeper insights into freedom, spontaneity, and the symbolic order.

The Application Of The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act To An Action Against The French Railroad For Transporting Thousands Of Jews And Others To Their Deaths: Abrams V. Sncf, Malvina Halberstam

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No abstract provided.

Nine Shibboleths Of The New Federalism, Marci A. Hamilton

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No abstract provided.

In Defense Of Making Government Pay: The Deterrent Effect Of Constitutional Tort Remedies, Myriam E. Gilles

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Legal economists are concerned with setting optimal deterrence levels. Armed with information concerning the public and private costs and benefits of a particular harmful activity, the legal economist seeks to set a “price” for the activity which, to some socially optimal extent, minimizes external costs while retaining external benefits. If the economist's information is perfect, he can predict precisely how an economically rational actor will respond to a particular price and achieve optimal deterrence of activities whose costs outweigh their benefits.

The Asymmetry Of State Sovereign Immunity, Richard Henry Seamon

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This Article discusses whether a State has sovereign immunity from claims for just compensation. The Article concludes that the States are indeed immune from just compensation suits brought against them in federal court; States are not necessarily immune, however, from just-compensation suits brought against them in their own courts of general jurisdiction. Thus, the States' immunity in federal court is not symmetrical to the States' immunity in their own courts. This asymmetry, the Article explains, is the result of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Due Process Clause obligates a State to provide a means of paying …

Victimized Twice -- The Intersection Of Domestic Violence And The Workplace: Legal Reform Through Curriculum Development, Lea B. Vaughn

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Domestic violence is at least a two-fold problem for American society. On the one hand, it is one of the leading causes of violence at the workplace against women. On the other, it prevents many women from attaining the economic security that would enable them to escape violence. After describing the background of this problem, this paper will canvass current legal remedies that are available to help battered women achieve economic security. This survey leads to the conclusion that the current pastiche of remedies is often ineffective because of their piecemeal approach to the problem, or because current doctrine does …

Reinventing Structural Reform Litigation: Deputizing Private Citizens In The Enforcement Of Civil Rights, Myriam E. Gilles

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The aim of this Article is to explore the possibility of constructing a model that harnesses the power of private citizens to reform unconstitutional practices, particularly in the critical area of police-related rights violations. I seek here to reintegrate private citizens into the enforcement of public laws; to tap the private experiential and financial resources that were a necessary condition of the great structural reform efforts of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

The vehicle by which I propose to accomplish these ends is a simple, yet novel, amendment to 42 U.S.C. § 14141, the statute which …

Breaking The Code Of Silence: Rediscovering "Custom" In Section 1983 Municipal Liability, Myriam E. Gilles

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No abstract provided.

Governments, Citizens, And Injurious Industries, Hanoch Dagan, James J. White

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In this Article, Professors Hanoch Dagan and James White study the most recent challenge raised by mass torts litigation: the interference of governments with the bilateral relationship between citizens and injurious industries. Using the tobacco settlement as their case study, Dagan and White explore the important benefits and the grave dangers of recognizing governments' entitlement to reimbursement for costs they have incurred in preventing or ameliorating their citizens' injuries. They further demonstrate that the current law can help capture these benefits and guard against the entailing risks, showing how subrogation law can serve as the legal foundation of the governments' …

The Secrecy Interest In Contract Law, Omri Ben-Shahar, Lisa Bernstein

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A long and distinguished line of law-and-economics articles has established that in many circumstances fully compensatory expectation damages are a desirable remedy for breach of contract because they induce both efficient performance and efficient breach. The expectation measure, which seeks to put the breached-against party in the position she would have been in had the contract been performed, has, therefore, rightly been chosen as the dominant contract default rule. It does a far better job of regulating breach-or-perform incentives than its leading competitors-the restitution measure, the reliance measure, and specific performance. This Essay does not directly take issue with the …

The Constitutionality Of Taxing Compensatory Damages For Mental Distress When There Was No Accompanying Physical Injury, Douglas A. Kahn

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Since 1919, statutory tax law has excluded from gross income compensatory damages received on account of a personal injury or sickness.1 The current version of that exclusion is set forth in section 104 (a) (2) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986.2 The construction of that exclusion, both by the courts and by the Commissioner, underwent significant alterations over the 80-year period that the provision has existed.3 The statute itself was amended several times, most recently in 1996.4 It is the 1996 amendment that has raised a constitutional issue concerning the validity of a portion of the statute.5

Markets As Monitors: A Proposal To Replace Class Actions With Exchanges As Securities Fraud Enforcers, Adam C. Pritchard

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Fraud in the securities markets has been a focus of legislative reform in recent years. Corporations-especially those in the high-technology industry-have complained that they are being unfairly targeted by plaintiffs' lawyers in class action securities fraud lawsuits. The corporations' complaints led to the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 ("Reform Act"). The Reform Act attempted to reduce meritless litigation against corporate issuers by erecting a series of procedural barriers to the filing of securities class actions. Plaintiffs' attorneys warned that the Reform Act and the resulting decrease in securities class actions would leave corporate fraud unchecked and deprive defrauded …

Separation Of Powers And The Separate Treatment Of Contract Claims Against The Federal Government For Specific Performance, Richard Henry Seamon

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No abstract provided.

Corporate Judgement Proofing: A Response To Lynn Lopucki's 'The Death Of Liability', James J. White

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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 …

Why Civil Cases Go To Trial: Strategic Bargaining And The Desire For Vindication, Samuel R. Gross, Kent D. Syverud

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When negotiations break down and a dispute cannot be settled, attorneys commonly blame their adversaries, often questioning their ethics or their judgment. After interviewing many attorneys, we have come to believe much of the criticism is directed at strategic moves in negotiation. But strategic ploys are not the only reason dispute resolution fails. Rather, our research also suggest that a genuine desire for vindication through trial or other formal process may be very significant in some types of cases where bargaining breaks down.

Going To Trial: A Rare Throw Of The Die, Samuel R. Gross, Kent D. Syverud

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If it is true, as we often hear, that we are one of the most litigious societies on earth, it is because of our propensity to sue, not our affinity for trials. Of the hundreds of thousands of civil lawsuits that are filed each year in America, the great majority are settled; of those that are not settled, most are ultimately dismissed by the plaintiffs or by the courts; only a few percent are tried to a jury or a judge. This is no accident. We prefer settlements and have designed a system of civil justice that embodies and expresses …

Game Theory And Nonrefundable Retainers: A Response To Professors Croson And Mnookin, Lester Brickman, Lawrence A. Cunningham

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In the inaugural issue of the Harvard Negotiation Law Review, Professors David Croson and Robert Mnookin attempt a game-theoretic defense of the nonrefundable retainer. A nonrefundable retainer is an attorney fee arrangement that requires a client to pay her lawyer a specified dollar amount in advance and entitles the lawyer to keep the fee even if he does no work. For nearly a decade, we have argued that nonrefundable retainers are unethical as a matter of professional responsibility and unenforceable as a matter of law. In the last few years, numerous courts have evaluated the enforceability of these agreements, choosing …

Dealing With Evidentiary Deficiency, Richard D. Friedman

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Lack of information distorts litigation. Claims or defenses that a party might prove easily, or that might even be undisputed, in a world of perfect information can be difficult or impossible to prove in the real world of imperfect information. Some information deficiencies are inevitable, at least in the sense that we could not eliminate them without incurring undue social costs. In some cases, however, a person's conduct may have caused the deficiency. More generally, the person may have had available a reasonable alternative course of conduct that would have eliminated, or at least mitigated, the deficiency. Ariel Porat and …

Emphasizing The Constitutional In Constitutional Torts (Symposium On Section 1983), Christina B. Whitman

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It has been surprisingly difficult to extricate constitutional litigation from torts. In this Article I would like to resist once more' the idea that tort doctrines and tort categories provide a useful model for constitutional decision-making. When it comes to deciding the merits of a constitutional claim, torts is a distraction. That is the case whether torts serves as a positive model for the constitutional cause of action or as an alternative to be shunned. As part of this argument, I also question the claim2 that Monroe v. Pape,3 the 1961 case that opened the door for damages relief under …

Structures Of Environmental Criminal Enforcement, Michael E. Herz

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No abstract provided.

Don't Try: Civil Jury Verdicts In A System Geared To Settlement, Samuel R. Gross, Kent D. Syverud

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If it is true, as we often hear, that we are one of the most litigious societies on earth, it is because of our propensity to sue, not our affinity for trials. Of the hundreds of thousands of civil lawsuits that are filed each year in America, the great majority are settled; of those that are not settled, most are ultimately dismissed by the plaintiffs or by the courts; only a few percent are tried to a jury or a judge. This is no accident. We prefer settlements and have designed a system of civil justice that embodies and expresses …

The Myth Of Testamentary Freedom, Melanie B. Leslie

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No abstract provided.

Nonrefundable Retainers: A Response To Critics Of The Absolute Ban, Lester Brickman, Lawrence A. Cunningham

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In the short span of time since the New York Court of Appeals banned nonrefundable retainers, numerous other courts have joined in prohibiting this widespread practice of lawyers charging a fee for services in advance and keeping the fee even if the services are not performed. The alacrity with which the New York rule is being embraced may reflect increased judicial recognition of the effect of egregious fee practices on the image of the bar and the role such practices play in the declining esteem in which the legal profession is held. Not only has there been a sharp decline …

Taxation Of Damages After Schleier - Where Are We And Where Do We Go From Here?, Douglas A. Kahn

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This article will examine the reasoning of the Schleier decision and speculate as to how taxation of pre-1996 damages will likely apply in light of Schleier. First, the article will set forth a very brief history of the judicial and administrative constructions of the statutory exclusion, and explore tax policy justifications for providing an exclusion from gross income for certain damages. These latter two items (set forth in Parts II and III of this article) are areas that have been extensively addressed previously by several commentators, including the author of this article.' The reason for exploring tax policy issues is …

Property Rules And Liability Rules: The Cathedral In Another Light, James E. Krier, Stewart J. Schwab

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Ronald Coase's essay on "The Problem of Social Cost" introduced the world to transaction costs, and the introduction laid the foundation for an ongoing cottage industry in law and economics. And of all the law-and-economics scholarship built on Coase's insights, perhaps the most widely known and influential contribution has been Calabresi and Melamed's discussion of what they called "property rules" and "liability rules."' Those rules and the methodology behind them are our subjects here. We have a number of objectives, the most basic of which is to provide a much needed primer for those students, scholars, and lawyers who are …

Nonrefundable Retainers Revisited, Lester Brickman, Lawrence A. Cunningham

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Amidst widespread public attention to fee abuses, a court recently held for the first time that nonrefundable retainers violate professional ethics. The court in In re Cooperman essentially adopted the argument of Professors Brickman and Cunningham that nonrefundable retainers are against public policy because they impair a client's right to discharge his attorney at any time without penalty. Because declaring such agreements unethical is tantamount, in the eyes of the practicing bar, to declaring them void, In re Cooperman has sparked a national outcry from those who profit from enforcing nonrefundable retainers. In this Article, Professors Brickman and Cunningham analyze …