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This concluding article seeks to take an overview of some intriguing issues that emerge from the national reports. At first sight, class actions exist to provide a solution to mass issues raised in courts. What are litigants, their lawyers, and the courts trying to do here? How successful have they been? Might there be other ways of solving mass issues, and what are those alternatives? Is the position static or dynamic? If the latter, where are things heading? What will happen next? Keywords: class action; collective redress; models, policy; excess; abuse; settlement; funding

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. (JEL: K 4, C 7, D 8)

A local plan inspector's interim finding that a Kent council cannot show a five-year supply of housing land has led to 30 new homes being allowed outside a village settlement [...]

This paper presents an extension of the Alesina and Drazen (1991.American Economic Review 81, 1170-1188) war of attrition model, extended by including an exogenous deadline, beyond which a punishment, namely a penalty is exacted from all players in case of no agreement. I solve for this game and establish that the higher the penalty is, the higher the probability of stabilizing the debt on time will be. I also show that there is a period of complete inertia right before the deadline: no group of agents wants to concede just before this date. The length of this period of total inertia is increasing in the penalty.

Need-to-know information about key current policy and legal issues Ministers are promising fresh national planning policy backing for new settlements but ensuring delivery is still a problem, Tim Burden concludes [...]

Effects of nine variables on compromising behavior and time to resolution were evaluated by a meta-analysis of published bargaining experiments reported over a 25-year period. The strongest effect sizes were obtained for the variables of negotiator's orientation, prenegotiation experience, time pressure, and the initial distance between positions. The orientation effect was particularly strong when it was communicated to bargainers by constituents or by the experimenter; the position distance effect was stronger for cognitive than for interest conflicts. Significantly weaker effect sizes were shown for opponent's concession strategy, representation, and accountability. The weakest effects occurred for the large versus small issues and visibility variables. These results challenge the assertion that group representation is a key determinant of competitive behavior in bargaining. Strong pressures on representatives to be accountable to their constituents did not increase the size of the effects. Analyses of differences in procedures used in the strongest and weakest effect size studies in each category suggest a number of conditions under which bargainers are likely to be intransigent.

Accountants, attorneys, and underwriters are often named as parties in securities class action suits for their roles in providing professional services to issuers of securities. In the past five years, there has been a marked increase in the number of cases against these professionals and in the total dollar amount they pay to settle such cases. Accountants are calling this trend a crisis and pushing for legislative reforms to limit their liability. Analysis of settlement data from the past five years shows settlements are on the rise and that accountants are being hurt by joint and several liability laws. However, a more important method for limiting accountant liability is addressing policies toward discovery and disclosure of client fraud. While attorney settlements appear stable and dispersed, underwriter settlement trends are even more severe than accountant trends. The study finds that "merits do matter " in determining settlement amounts, contrary to the popular belief that the justice system is not working in this area.

Arbitration outcomes are uncertain. When risk preferences are unobservable, players may make offers that attempt to extract the willingness of risk-averse bargaining partners to pay to avoid the uncertainties of arbitration. When such a 'hard' offer is made to a risk-neutral bargaining partner, it will be refused and arbitration will result. This is true even when the distribution of outcomes is common knowledge. Importantly, risk preferences may be difficult to communicate, even if it is in the interest of both parties to do so.

In this Article, Professors Kornhauser and Revesz study the settlement-inducing properties of the rules governing the litigation of claims involving multiple defendants. Most importantly, they show that the effects of joint and several liability on the choice between settlement and litigation depend on the correlation of the plaintiff's probabilities of success against the defendants. In the case of two defendants, these probabilities are independent if the outcome of the plaintiff's claim against one defendant does not depend upon whether the plaintiff prevails against, loses to, or settles with the other defendant. In contrast, these probabilities are perfectly correlated if, when the plaintiff litigates against both defendants, it either has to prevail against both or lose to both. Joint and several liability coupled with a pro tanto set-off rule (under which, when the plaintiff settles with one defendant and litigates against the other, its claim against the non-settling defendant is reduced by the amount of the settlement), discourages settlement with both defendants if the plaintiff's probabilities of success are independent. In turn, joint and several liability encourages settlement with at least one defendant if these probabilities are perfectly correlated. The authors also analyze the arguments raised by the courts concerning the relative settlement-inducing properties of the pro tanto set-off rule and the apportioned share set-off rule (under which, when the plaintiff settles with one defendant and litigates against the other, its claim againstthe non-settling defendant is reduced by the apportioned share of the settling defendant). They show that essentially all of these arguments are based on an incomplete or incorrect understanding of the incentives faced by the respective parties.

The tendency for judges in class actions to disregard defense settlement offers that are objected to by class counsel is not mandated by law under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 23(e). Judges should be willing to consider defense settlements in order to impose some control on the process, act as a check on the activities of an overzealous class counsel and protect the interests of the defendant. An unpublished decision, In re Technical Equities Federal Securities Litigation, is examined as an example of the acceptance of a defense-sponsored settlement proposal., This article will begin with an overview of the class action settlement process, then discuss whether the courts have the power to approve defense-sponsored settlement offers and will consider why a court, even if it has the powers, would want to exercise it. Next the author will discuss a recent case, In re Technical Equities Federal Securities Litigation, No. C-86-20157(A)-WAI (N.D. Cal., San Jose Div. April 23, 1991), in which the district court in an unpublished decision did just that, which suggests the kind of case that might warrant granting such a defense motion. Finally, the author discusses the reasons courts historically shy away from defense-sponsored settlements and why those reasons may need reexamining.

The site's proximity to a main road and built development has helped persuade an inspector that a proposed filling station in Essex would not have a significantly adverse effect on [...]

Plans for a new settlement in rural Lanarkshire have been rejected by a reporter who expressed grave misgivings about the scheme's prospects of success. The community was planned to comprise [...]

Robert E. Scott and William J. Stuntz support reform of plea bargaining because of an informational flaw which puts the innocent at a disadvantage. However, the flaw is actually in the anticipated trial procedure, where the innocent risk conviction. Plea bargaining is at least as effective as trial at determining guilt or innocence. Plea bargaining should be retained because it gives defendants autonomy and because compromise leaves everyone better off.

A model of sequential bargaining with one-sided incomplete information is analyzed where, if an agreement is not reached, the agents go to court. A 'deadline effect' emerges where much settlement occurs just prior to the trial, and many cases proceed to court. If fixed costs are incurred during each bargaining period, a 'U-shaped' pattern of settlement emerges. These patterns persist in the limit as the time between offers approaches zero. A model with an endogenous trial date is also considered, and it is shown that even with complete information, there exist inefficient equilibria where disputes are resolved in court.