English Rule and Frivolous Suits: Conditional versus Hourly Fees
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Yannick Gabuthy
Under the conditional fee arrangement, a lawyer receives an upscale premium if a case is won. In this article, we develop an asymmetric information game of settlement and litigation in order to compare hourly and conditional fees with regard to their effects on the number of frivolous suits being filed, the settlement rate of cases, and the total costs of litigation. The main result shows that a conditional fee schedule improves the efficiency of the litigation process under the English fee-shifting rule by undermining frivolous plaintiffs' incentives to file suit and then reducing total expenditures. It hence provides an additional theoretical foundation for the recent switchover from hourly fees to conditional fees in the United Kingdom.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- In the Beginning Was the Word. Now is the Copyright
- The $700 Billion Bailout: A Public-Choice Interpretation
- Corporate Liability and Internal Procedures
- The Social Cost of Blackmail
- The Problem of Social Cost: What Problem? A Critique of the Reasoning of A.C. Pigou and R.H. Coase
- Should Courts Always Enforce What Contracting Parties Write?
- Implementing Relevant Market Tests in Antitrust Policy: Application to Computer Servers
- English Rule and Frivolous Suits: Conditional versus Hourly Fees
- Compliance Institutions in Treaties
- A Note on the Deterrence Effects of the Forfeiture of Illegal Gains
- Fostering Regulatory Compliance: The Role of Environmental Self-Auditing and Audit Policies
- Free-Riding on Altruistic Punishment? An Experimental Comparison of Third-Party Punishment in a Stand-Alone and in an In-Group Environment
- Corporatization and Firm Performance: Evidence from Publicly-Provided Local Utilities
- Securities Class Actions: A Helping Hand for Bank Regulators in Trouble?
- The Multiplier Effect of Public Expenditure on Justice: The Case of Rental Litigation
