Tactical Dilatory Practice in Litigation: Evidence from EC Merger Proceedings

Peter Ormosi
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Peter Ormosi: Centre for Competition Policy and Norwich Business School, University of East Anglia

No 2011-12, Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) from Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.

Abstract: The economic analysis of delay in legal procedures has received considerable attention in the past. Most of these works focus on the determinants of delay in litigation but very little analysis has been dedicated to examining tactical delay caused by the parties to the litigation. This paper offers an empirical example to fill some of this gap by analysing strategic delay in pre-trial administrative litigation. The paper shows that in European merger litigation parties may decide to tactically challenge discovery attempts, which causes a delay that is strategically used to gain more time to settle the case and to avoid a lengthy in-depth investigation, similar to the prediction of Miceli's (1999) theoretical model. This type of delay can be beneficial to merging parties and to society as well.

Keywords: Litigation costs; tactical delay; antitrust law; mergers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K21 K41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-08-01
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uea:ueaccp:2011_12

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