IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_2334.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Optimal Litigation Strategies with Signaling and Screening

Author

Listed:
  • Philippe Choné
  • Laurent Linnemer

Abstract

This paper examines the strategic effects of case preparation in litigation. Specifically, it shows how the pretrial efforts incurred by one party may alter its adversary’s incentives to settle. We build a sequential game with one-sided asymmetric information where the informed party first decides to invest, or not, in case preparation, and the uninformed party then makes a settlement offer. Overinvestment, or bluff, always prevails in equilibrium: with positive probability, plaintiffs with weak cases take a chance on investing, and regret it in case of trial. Furthermore, due to the endogenous investment decision, the probability of trial may (locally) decrease with case strength. Overinvestment generates inefficient preparation costs, but may trigger more settlements, thereby reducing trial costs.

Suggested Citation

  • Philippe Choné & Laurent Linnemer, 2008. "Optimal Litigation Strategies with Signaling and Screening," CESifo Working Paper Series 2334, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_2334
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp2334.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrew F. Daughety & Jennifer F. Reinganum, 1999. "Hush Money," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 30(4), pages 661-678, Winter.
    2. Kathryn E. Spier, 1992. "The Dynamics of Pretrial Negotiation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 59(1), pages 93-108.
    3. Joel L. Schrag, 1999. "Managerial Judges: An Economic Analysis of the Judicial Management of Legal Discovery," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 30(2), pages 305-323, Summer.
    4. Lucian Arye Bebchuk, 1984. "Litigation and Settlement under Imperfect Information," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(3), pages 404-415, Autumn.
    5. David S. Kaplan & Joyce Sadka & Jorge Luis Silva‐Mendez, 2008. "Litigation and Settlement: New Evidence from Labor Courts in Mexico," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 5(2), pages 309-350, June.
    6. Daughety, Andrew F. & Reinganum, Jennifer F., 1994. "Settlement negotiations with two-sided asymmetric information: Model duality, information distribution, and efficiency," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 283-298, September.
    7. Hay, Bruce L, 1995. "Effort, Information, Settlement, Trial," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(1), pages 29-62, January.
    8. Lisa L. Posey, 1998. "The Plaintiff's Attorney in the Liability Insurance Claims Settlement Process: A Game Theoretic Approach," Journal of Insurance Issues, Western Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 21(2), pages 119-137.
    9. Jennifer F. Reinganum & Louise L. Wilde, 1986. "Settlement, Litigation, and the Allocation of Litigation Costs," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 17(4), pages 557-566, Winter.
    10. Urs Schweizer, 1989. "Litigation and Settlement under Two-Sided Incomplete Information," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 56(2), pages 163-177.
    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. Shaun Larcom & Mare Sarr, 2018. "On the Perils of Commitment to Punishment when Criminals Are Strategic," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 47(2), pages 391-418.
    2. Choné, Philippe & Linnemer, Laurent, 2010. "Optimal litigation strategies with observable case preparation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 271-288, November.
    3. Ohlendorf, Susanne & Schmitz, Patrick, 2009. "Signaling an Outside Option," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 281, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
    4. Thomas D. Jeitschko & Byung-Cheol Kim, 2013. "Signaling, Learning, and Screening Prior to Trial: Informational Implications of Preliminary Injunctions," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 29(5), pages 1085-1113, October.
    5. Morin Chassé, Rémi, 2019. "Strategic behavior in environmental contests with asymmetric ability and reimbursement," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 115-126.

    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. Choné, Philippe & Linnemer, Laurent, 2010. "Optimal litigation strategies with observable case preparation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 271-288, November.
    2. Osborne, Evan, 1999. "Who should be worried about asymmetric information in litigation?," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 399-409, September.
    3. Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci & Bruno Deffains, 2007. "Uncertainty of Law and the Legal Process," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 163(4), pages 627-656, December.
    4. Chopard, Bertrand & Cortade, Thomas & Langlais, Eric, 2010. "Trial and settlement negotiations between asymmetrically skilled parties," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 18-27, March.
    5. Heyes, Anthony & Rickman, Neil & Tzavara, Dionisia, 2004. "Legal expenses insurance, risk aversion and litigation," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 107-119, March.
    6. Anne Duchêne, 2017. "Patent Litigation Insurance," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 84(2), pages 631-660, June.
    7. Koçkesen, Levent & Usman, Murat, 2012. "Litigation and settlement under judicial agency," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 300-308.
    8. Steven Shavell, 2003. "Economic Analysis of Litigation and the Legal Process," NBER Working Papers 9697, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Argenton, Cedric & Wang, Xiaoyu, 2020. "Litigation and Settlement under Loss Aversion," Discussion Paper 2020-008, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    10. Daughety, Andrew F. & Reinganum, Jennifer F., 1994. "Settlement negotiations with two-sided asymmetric information: Model duality, information distribution, and efficiency," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 283-298, September.
    11. Argenton, Cedric & Wang, Xiaoyu, 2020. "Litigation and Settlement under Loss Aversion," Discussion Paper 2020-002, Tilburg University, Tilburg Law and Economic Center.
    12. Andrew F. Daughety & Jennifer F. Reinganum, 1995. "Keeping Society in the Dark: On the Admissibility of Pretrial Negotiations as Evidence in Court," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 26(2), pages 203-221, Summer.
    13. Dari-Mattiacci, Giuseppe & Saraceno, Margherita, 2020. "Fee shifting and accuracy in adjudication," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    14. Amy Farmer & Paul Pecorino, 2005. "Civil Litigation with Mandatory Discovery and Voluntary Transmission of Private Information," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(1), pages 137-159, January.
    15. Lee, Yoon-Ho Alex & Klerman, Daniel, 2016. "The Priest-Klein hypotheses: Proofs and generality," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 59-76.
    16. Luca Anderlini & Leonardo Felli & Giovanni Immordino, 2019. "Costly Pretrial Agreements," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 48(1), pages 159-188.
    17. Ayouni, Mehdi & Friehe, Tim & Gabuthy, Yannick, 2023. "Asking for information prior to settlement or trial when misrepresentation of evidence is possible," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 26-35.
    18. Chris Kuo, 2014. "An Economic Analysis on Overbilling Incentives and Auditing Programs," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 121(3), pages 441-449, May.
    19. Cédric Argenton & Xiaoyu Wang, 2023. "Litigation and settlement under loss aversion," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 56(2), pages 369-402, October.
    20. Bar, Talia & Kalinowski, Jesse, 2019. "Patent validity and the timing of settlements," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    case preparation; settlement; trial; signaling;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • 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:ces:ceswps:_2334. 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: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    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.