This paper explores the prisoner's dilemma that may result when workers and firms are involved in labour disputes and must decide whether to hire a lawyer to be represented at trial. Using a representative data set of labour disputes in the UK and a large population of French unfair dismissal...

A generic drug maker that has been sued for infringing a patent on a branded drug will sometimes promise, as part of an agreement settling the litigation, to delay selling its drug until as late as the expiration of the patent term. I adapt the standard optimal patent term model to determine...

In late 2017, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation ordered the consolidation of a few hundred cases pending around the country against opioid manufacturers and distributors into a Multi-District Litigation (MDL) in the Northern District of Ohio. Today, the Opioid MDL consists of...

As long as there have been prescription drugs, people have suffered injuries caused by those drugs. While a perfect level of safety is just not possible, state tort laws have long provided protection to injured drug consumers and incentive to drug manufacturers to improve and maintain the safety...

This lecture for the Foundation for Law, Justice and Society, at Wolfson College, University of Oxford, addresses the cost to society of pharmaceutical mass tort litigation, nearly 15 years after the withdrawal by Merck & Co., Inc. of Vioxx® (rofecoxib) from markets worldwide.When Merck...