Logo
Munich Personal RePEc Archive

Exploiting Plaintiffs Through Settlement: Divide and Conquer

Che, Yeon-Koo and Spier, Kathryn (2007): Exploiting Plaintiffs Through Settlement: Divide and Conquer. Published in: Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics

[thumbnail of MPRA_paper_6104.pdf]
Preview
PDF
MPRA_paper_6104.pdf

Download (265kB) | Preview

Abstract

This paper considers settlement negotiations between a single defendant and $N$ plaintiffs when there are fixed costs of litigation. When making simultaneous take-it-or-leave-it offers to the plaintiffs, the defendant adopts a divide and conquer strategy. Plaintiffs settle their claims for less than they are jointly worth. The problem is worse when $N$ is larger, the offers are sequential, and the plaintiffs make offers instead. Although divide and conquer strategies dilute the defendant's incentives, they increase the settlement rate and reduce litigation spending. Plaintiffs can raise their joint payoff through transfer payments, voting rules, and covenants not to accept discriminatory offers.

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact us: mpra@ub.uni-muenchen.de

This repository has been built using EPrints software.

MPRA is a RePEc service hosted by Logo of the University Library LMU Munich.