IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jlstud/v36y2007p171-187.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Effect of Judicial Expedience on Attorney Fees in Class Actions

Author

Listed:
  • Eric Helland
  • Jonathan Klick

Abstract

Judges facing exogenous constraints on their pecuniary income have an incentive to reduce their workload to increase their private welfare. In the face of an increase in caseload, this incentive will induce judges to attempt to terminate some cases more rapidly. In class action cases, failing to grant an attorney fee request will delay termination. This conflict is likely to lead judges to authorize higher fees as court congestion increases. Using two data sets of class action settlements, we show that attorney fees are significantly and positively related to the congestion level of the court hearing the case.

Suggested Citation

  • Eric Helland & Jonathan Klick, 2007. "The Effect of Judicial Expedience on Attorney Fees in Class Actions," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 36(1), pages 171-187, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlstud:v:36:y:2007:p:171-187
    DOI: 10.1086/508266
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/508266
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/508266?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

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

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Theodore Eisenberg & Geoffrey P. Miller, 2004. "Attorney Fees in Class Action Settlements: An Empirical Study," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 1(1), pages 27-78, March.
    2. Lynk, William J, 1994. "The Courts and the Plaintiffs' Bar: Awarding the Attorney's Fee in Class-Action Litigation," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 23(1), pages 185-209, January.
    3. Eric Helland & Jonathan Klick & Alexander Tabarrok, 2005. "Data Watch: Tort-uring the Data," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(2), pages 207-220, Spring.
    4. Beenstock, Michael & Haitovsky, Yoel, 2004. "Does the appointment of judges increase the output of the judiciary?," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 351-369, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Christoph Engel & Keren Weinshall, 2020. "Manna from Heaven for Judges: Judges’ Reaction to a Quasi‐Random Reduction in Caseload," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 17(4), pages 722-751, December.
    2. Thomas Ulen, 2011. "An introduction to the law and economics of class action litigation," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 32(2), pages 185-203, October.
    3. De Mot, Jef & Faure, Michael & Klick, Jonathan, 2015. "Appellate caseload and the switch to comparative negligence," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 147-156.
    4. Yannick Gabuthy & Eve-Angéline Lambert, 2018. "Legal Advertising and Frivolous Lawsuits," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 174(3), pages 570-593, September.
    5. Tamar Kricheli‐Katz & Keren Weinshall, 2023. "Judging fast or slow: The effects of reduced caseloads on gender‐ and ethnic‐based disparities in case outcomes," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 20(4), pages 961-1004, December.
    6. Russell Smyth & Vinod Mishra, 2009. "The Publication Decisions of Judges on the County Court of Victoria," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 85(271), pages 462-471, December.
    7. Alon Klement & Keren Weinshall-Margel, 2016. "Cost-Benefit Analysis of Class Actions: An Israeli Perspective," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 172(1), pages 75-103, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Roussey, Ludivine & Soubeyran, Raphael, 2018. "Overburdened judges," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 21-32.
    2. Pontus Mattsson & Jonas Månsson & Christian Andersson & Fredrik Bonander, 2018. "A bootstrapped Malmquist index applied to Swedish district courts," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 46(1), pages 109-139, August.
    3. Berlemann, Michael & Christmann, Robin, 2017. "The Role of Precedents on Court Delay - Evidence from a civil law country," MPRA Paper 80057, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Michael Heise, 2016. "Assessing Assessments of Israel's 2006 Class Action Law," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 172(1), pages 108-112, March.
    5. Bruno Deffains & Eric Langlais, 2011. "Informational externalities and settlements in mass tort litigations," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 32(2), pages 241-262, October.
    6. Eugenia Nissi & Massimiliano Giacalone & Carlo Cusatelli, 2019. "The Efficiency of the Italian Judicial System: A Two Stage Data Envelopment Analysis Approach," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 146(1), pages 395-407, November.
    7. Gupta, Maansi & Bolia, Nomesh B., 2024. "Factors affecting efficient discharge of judicial functions: Insights from Indian courts," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    8. Alberto Cassone & Giovanni Ramello, 2011. "The simple economics of class action: private provision of club and public goods," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 32(2), pages 205-224, October.
    9. Hans-Bernd Schaefer, 2000. "The Bundling of Similar Interests in Litigation. The Incentives for Class Action and Legal Actions taken by Associations," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 9(3), pages 183-213, May.
    10. Moral, Alfonso & Rosales, Virginia & Martín-Román, Ángel, 2021. "Professional vs. non-professional labour judges: their impact on the quality of judicial decisions," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    11. Stefan Voigt, 2016. "Determinants of judicial efficiency: a survey," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 42(2), pages 183-208, October.
    12. Ingo Vogelsang & Nishal Ramphal & Stephen Carroll & Nicholas Pace, 2007. "An economic analysis of consumer class actions in regulated industries," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 32(1), pages 87-104, August.
    13. Gustavo Ferro & Victoria Oubiña & Carlos A. Romero, 2019. "Benchmarking Labor Courts: an Efficiency Frontier Analysis," Asociación Argentina de Economía Política: Working Papers 4140, Asociación Argentina de Economía Política.
    14. Christensen, Robert K. & Szmer, John, 2012. "Examining the efficiency of the U.S. courts of appeals: Pathologies and prescriptions," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 30-37.
    15. Caio Castelliano & Peter Grajzl & Tomas Aquino Guimaraes & Andre Alves, 2021. "Judicial enforcement and caseload: theory and evidence from Brazil," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 52(1), pages 137-168, August.
    16. Roberto Ippoliti & Giovanni B. Ramello, 2018. "Governance of tax courts," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 19(4), pages 317-338, November.
    17. 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.
    18. Konstantinos Kalliris & Theodore Alysandratos, 2023. "One judge to rule them all: Single‐member courts as an answer to delays in criminal trials," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 20(1), pages 233-268, March.
    19. Ramseyer, J. Mark, 2012. "Talent matters: Judicial productivity and speed in Japan," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 38-48.
    20. Melanie Millar & Roger M. White & Xin Zheng, 2023. "Substance Abuse and Workplace Fraud: Evidence from Physicians," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 183(2), pages 585-602, March.

    More about this item

    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:ucp:jlstud:v:36:y:2007:p:171-187. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLS .

    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.