Attorneys and Legal Information

The Efficiency and Equity of Nonpecuniary Damages Critics of the tort system have particularly questioned the deterrence benefits of nonpecuniary damages (punitive awards and compensatory awards for pain and suffering). They argue that large nonpecuniary damages cannot provide useful incentives for precaution because they are awarded in a subjective, arbitrary, and unpredictable way, with little connection to the actual harm or, in the case of punitive damages, to the character of the injurer's conduct.
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Class Action Lawsuits and Lawyers

However, Daniel Kessler and Mark McClellan have shown that passage of state laws limiting liability for doctors led to lower spending for certain heart procedures. See Kessler and McClellan, "Do Doctors Practice Defensive Medicine?" Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 111, no. 2 (May 1996), pp.
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Class Action Lawsuits and Lawyers

Tort System (2003). 4. The estimates also omit courts' administrative costs, but those are thought to be relatively small. An estimate from the RAND Institute for Civil Justice cited by Tillinghast-Towers Perrin puts those costs at 1 percent of total direct costs.
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