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Filtering Tort Accidents

Tijdschriftbijdrage - Tijdschriftartikel

Conventional wisdom in the economic analysis of tort law holds that legal errors distort incentives, causing behavior to depart from the optimum. If potential injurers know that courts err, they may engage in less or more than optimal precaution. This article revisits the effect of judicial error on the incentives of potential injurers by identifying a heretofore-neglected filtering effect of uncertainty in settings of imperfect judicial decision-making. We show that when courts make errors in the application of the liability standards, uncertainty about erroneous decision-making filters out the most harmful torts but leaves unaffected less harmful accidents. Our insight applies to various procedural and institutional aspects of legal adjudication, including the randomization of case assignment, the strength of precedent, and the use of standards versus rules.
Tijdschrift: American Law and Economics Review
ISSN: 1465-7252
Issue: 2
Volume: 22
Pagina's: 377 - 396
Jaar van publicatie:2020
Trefwoorden:litigation, torts, uncertainty, filtering
BOF-keylabel:ja
IOF-keylabel:ja
BOF-publication weight:1
CSS-citation score:1
Auteurs:International
Authors from:Higher Education
Toegankelijkheid:Open