Comparing All-or-Nothing and Proportionate Damages: A Rent-Seeking Approach

Jef De Mot () and Miceli Thomas J. ()
Additional contact information
Jef De Mot: Center for Advanced Studies in Law and Economics, Research Foundation Flanders, University of Ghent, St. Pietersnieuwstraat 33, 9000 Gent, Belgium
Miceli Thomas J.: Department of Economics, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269, USA

Review of Law & Economics, 2015, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-17

Abstract: This paper compares the all-or-nothing and proportionate damage rules for allocating damages in tort cases under evidentiary uncertainty. The focus is on how the two rules affect litigation expenditures by plaintiffs and defendants. The results of simulation experiments show that the expected judgment at trial is higher under the all-or-nothing rule for cases where the defendant did not take adequate care, but the judgment is higher under the proportionate rule when the defendant took more than adequate care. As for litigation expenditures, assuming equal costs of litigation, overall expenditures are higher under the all-or-nothing rule, except for very weak and very strong cases.

Keywords: All-or-nothing rule; proportionate damages; litigation costs; rent-seeking (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K13 K41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/rle-2014-0058 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:rlecon:v:11:y:2015:i:1:p:1-17:n:4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/rle/html

DOI: 10.1515/rle-2014-0058

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Law & Economics is currently edited by Francesco Parisi

More articles in Review of Law & Economics from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().