The information that is created and disseminated through the litigation process can have social value. When economic agents learn about risks, they can fine-tune their future behaviors to mitigate these risks. Specifically, suppose that an injured plaintiff sues a defendant for damages sustained...

The expansive application of tort law to business enterprise has established courts as regulators of the safety and supply of virtually all mass-produced goods and services, including those such as prescription drugs and medical care, upon which the lives and livelihood of most people depend....

This paper presents a model of penalties that reconciles the conflicting accounts optimal punishment by Becker, who argued penalties should internalize social costs, and Posner, who suggested penalties should completely deter offenses. The model delivers specific recommendations as to when...

A substantial recent literature has documented the inability of jurors to make sound decisions with respect to punitive damages, particularly for health, safety, and environmental torts. Included in this literature are experimental studies documenting the better performance of judges than jurors...

The free public services doctrine (also known as the municipal cost recovery rule) states that a government entity may not recover from a tortfeasor the costs of public services occasioned by the tortfeasor's wrongdoing. This article traces the history of the doctrine and argues for its...

People seriously misjudge accident risks because they routinely neglect relevant information about exposure. Such risk judgments affect both personal and public policy decisions, e.g., choice of a transport mode, but also play a vital role in legal determinations, such as assessments of...

Some commentators have recently proclaimed the U.S. Alien Tort Claims Act to be dead. In Nevsun Resources, the Canadian Supreme Court took a seemingly bold step in providing access to justice to victims of human rights abuses against corporate entities, presumably to partly fill this void. This...

Conventional wisdom has long perceived the patent and tort systems as separate legal entities, each tasked with a starkly different mission. Patent law rewards novel ideas; tort law deters harmful conduct. Against this backdrop, this Essay uncovers the opposing effects of patent and tort law on...

We present a new model of negligence and causation and examine the influence of the negligence test, in the presence of intervening causation, on the level of care. In this model, the injurer’s decision to take care reduces the likelihood of an accident only in the event that some...