Rules of Evidence and Liability in Contract Litigation: The Efficiency of the General Dynamics Rule

Vlad Radoias (), Simon Wilkie and Michael Williams ()
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Michael Williams: Competition Economics

No 2014-07, Working Papers from Towson University, Department of Economics

Abstract: We study the effects of different rules of evidence and liability in con- tract litigation. When a contracting firm fails to perform, it may blame the buyer for withholding private information. We show that the evidentiary and liability rules used by the Supreme Court in General Dynamics v. U.S. lead to a more efficient outcome than either a strict liability rule or an evidentiary rule requiring the disclosure of the buyer's private information for use by the contractor in litigation.

Keywords: Procurement auctions; state-secrets privilege; superior knowledge; private information. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D44 D82 H56 H57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2014-10, Revised 2014-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cta and nep-law
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http://webapps.towson.edu/cbe/economics/workingpapers/2014-07.pdf First version, 2014 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Rules of evidence and liability in contract litigation: The efficiency of the General Dynamics rule (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tow:wpaper:2014-07

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