Do Parties to Nuisance Cases Bargain after Judgment? A Glimpse Inside the Cathedral
University of Chicago Law Review, Spring 1999
Posted: 17 May 1999
Abstract
This Article examines the aftermath of twenty ordinary nuisance cases, and finds no bargaining after judgment in any of them; nor did the parties' lawyers believe that bargaining would have occurred if judgment had been given to the loser. The lawyers said that the possibility of such bargaining was foreclosed by animosity between the parties and by their distaste for cash bargaining over the rights at issue. The Article considers a number of questions raised by these results, including the following: Might the obstacles to bargaining in these cases be related to the absence of robust markets for the rights at stake? Should animosity or a distaste for bargaining be considered types of "transaction costs"? It is common for economic analysts of remedies to use nuisance cases as examples to illustrate their models; what are the implications of these results for the usefulness of those models? Might greater particularity might be needed before economic models can generate advice about remedies reliable enough to be useful to courts?
Note: This is a description of the article and is not the actual abstract.
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation