民事诉讼法英文论文大规模侵权诉讼的非正式解决pdf.pdf

Eur J Law Econ (2011) 32:241–262 DOI 10.1007/s10657-011-9237-8 Informational externalities and settlements in mass tort litigations Bruno Deffains • Eric Langlais Published online: 21 April 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 Abstract This paper elaborates on a basic model of mass tort litigation, high- lighting the existence of positive informational externalities afforded by the dis- covery process (as a general technology of production of evidences) in order to study when a class action is formed, or when a sequence of individual trials is more likely. We illustrate the argument that when several plaintiffs file individually a lawsuit against the same tortfeasor, the resolution of the various cases through repeated trials produces positive informational externalities. When class actions are forbidden, these externalities only benefit to the later plaintiffs (through precedents, jurisprudence...). When they are allowed, the first filer may have an incentive to initiate a class action as far as it enables him to benefit from these externalities, through the sharing of information with later filers. We provide sufficient conditions under which a class action is formed, assuming a perfect discovery process. We also show that when contingent fees are used to reward attorneys’ services, plaintiffs become neutral to the arrival of new information on their case. Keywords Mass tort class action Information sharing Repeated litigation Contingent fees JEL Classification K13 K4 H41 B. Deffains ´ ´ University Pantheon-Assas, Paris II, ERMES EAC 4441 CNRS, 26 rue des Fosses Saint-Jacques, 75005 Paris, France e-mail: bruno.deffains@u-paris2.fr E. Langlais () EconomiX, CNRS-Paris Ouest University, and LEF-INRA-AgroParisTech Nancy,