In this Article, we focus on an important problem involving mass-accident cases that was highlighted by the Deepwater Horizon litigation: overuse of courts to enforce contribution claims. These claims seek to shift incurred or expected liability and damages between the business and governmental...

Courts apply compensatory damages, restitution, and punitive damages to formulate litigants' civil remedies. The frequently contested policy justifications for these three remedies are often hazy and uncertain. The transitions between the three remedies are disputed. Lawyers and courts often...

The allocation of trial costs and the way a trial progresses are two important issues in civil procedure. The combination of these two elements has received relatively little attention in the law and economics literature. The prior literature has only compared unitary litigation (e.g. liability...

The previous literature on comparative and contributory negligence points out that administrative costs are higher under comparative negligence because the courts must decide on the degree of negligence by both parties and not just whether the parties were negligent. In this article, I show that...

The analysis of tort law is one of the most well-developed applications of economic methodology in the study of law. In this essay, we provide an overview of the economic approach to tort law, analyzing the effects of liability rules on care incentives. We catalogue a variety of possible tort...

The Law & Economics movement has occasionally been a victim of its own success. Over the past four decades, it has generated an enormous specialist literature, often explicitly intended for other specialists. As is so often the case with increased specialization, the result has been escalating...

Exemplary damages are damages awarded in a court case which go beyond compensation to the victim. Not all nations allow courts to award exemplary damages and those nations which do not, generally will not uphold rulings of this nature. Exemplary damages are explicitly intended as punishment to...

In the law and economics literature the question of efficiency of liability rules has primarily been analyzed in the context of two-party interactions in which identities of the victim and the injurer in case of occurrence of accident, are a priori certain. The main conclusion that has emerged...

This article examines the procedures for determining damages in tort cases and assesses the empirical characteristics of these damages. Damages for economic loss involve noncontroversial economic concepts that seek to make the victim whole from a financial standpoint. Nevertheless, there is...