IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jleorg/v30y2014i2p244-274..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Information and the Disposition of Medical Malpractice Claims: A Competing Risks Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Paul Fenn
  • Neil Rickman

Abstract

We use a competing risk model to explore the relationship between information about case strength and the speed with which medical malpractice disputes are resolved. We have data on the time to resolution of such disputes in a group of English hospitals and how each dispute is resolved (drop, settlement, or trial). We also have detailed data on the evolution of expert assessments of case strength and the timing of external experts’ reports that are designed to share information and that, therefore, might be expected to influence litigation outcomes. We find that litigation encourages dropping and settling of cases over time in a systematic way relating to their assessed strength; cases that involve relatively little uncertainty are resolved faster than those where liability is more unclear. We suggest that this evidence is consistent with the litigation process using time to help sort, and deal with, cases according to their strength. (JEL: C72, K41).

Suggested Citation

  • Paul Fenn & Neil Rickman, 2014. "Information and the Disposition of Medical Malpractice Claims: A Competing Risks Analysis," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 30(2), pages 244-274.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:30:y:2014:i:2:p:244-274.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jleo/ewt002
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Samantha Bielen & Wim Marneffe & Peter Grajzl & Valentina Dimitrova-Grajzl, 2018. "The Duration of Judicial Deliberation: Evidence from Belgium," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 174(2), pages 303-333, June.
    2. Luke Garrod & Bruce Lyons, 2016. "Early Settlement in European Merger Control," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 64(1), pages 27-63, March.
    3. Peter Grajzl & Katarina Zajc, 2017. "Litigation and the timing of settlement: evidence from commercial disputes," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 44(2), pages 287-319, October.
    4. Bielen, Samantha & Grajzl, Peter & Marneffe, Wim, 2017. "Procedural events, judge characteristics, and the timing of settlement," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 97-110.
    5. Samantha Bielen & Peter Grajzl & Wim Marneffe, 2017. "Understanding the Time to Court Case Resolution: A Competing Risks Analysis Using Belgian Data," CESifo Working Paper Series 6450, CESifo.
    6. Lara Wemans & Manuel Coutinho Pereira, 2018. "How long does it take to enforce a debt in the Portuguese judicial system?," Economic Bulletin and Financial Stability Report Articles and Banco de Portugal Economic Studies, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • K41 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Litigation Process

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:30:y:2014:i:2:p:244-274.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/jleo .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.