Efficient Standards of Due Care: Should Courts Find More Parties Negligent Under Comparative Negligence?

Aaron Edlin ()

No 93-218, Economics Working Papers from University of California at Berkeley

Abstract: We show that negligence standards should differ under comparative and contributory negligence regimes. If due care standards are allowed to vary with the laws of a jurisdiction, then comparative and contributory negligence may be equally efficient, even in a model with evidentiary uncertainty. It is commonly observed that jurors are naturally inclined to be more lenient to plaintiffs on the issue of plaintiff negligence in contributory negligence jurisdictions. We show that such lenience may actually be efficient in addition to satisfying jurors' senses of equity. A similar conclusion applies to defendants.

Date: 1993-10-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Journal Article: Efficient standards of due care: Should courts find more parties negligent under comparative negligence? (1994)
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:ucb:calbwp:93-218

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IBER, F502 Haas Building, University of California, Berkeley CA 94720-1922

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Working Papers from University of California at Berkeley University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().