Tacitcal Dilatory Practice in Litigation: Evidence from EC Merger Proceedings

ESRC Centre for Competition Policy Working Paper No. 11-12

28 Pages Posted: 21 Dec 2011

See all articles by Peter L. Ormosi

Peter L. Ormosi

Norwich Business School; University of East Anglia (UEA) - Centre for Competition Policy; Compass Lexecon

Date Written: August 1, 2011

Abstract

The economic analysis of delay in legal procedures has received considerable attention in the past. Most of these works focus on the determinants of delay in litigation but very little analysis has been dedicated to examining tactical delay caused by the parties to the litigation. This paper offers an empirical example to fill some of this gap by analyzing strategic delay in pre-trial administrative litigation. The paper shows that in European merger litigation parties may decide to tactically challenge discovery attempts, which causes a delay that is strategically used to gain more time to settle the case and to avoid a lengthy in-depth investigation, similar to the prediction of Miceli’s (1999) theoretical model. This type of delay can be beneficial to merging parties and to society as well.

Keywords: litigation costs, tactical delay, antitrust law, mergers

JEL Classification: K21, K41

Suggested Citation

Ormosi, Peter L. and Ormosi, Peter L., Tacitcal Dilatory Practice in Litigation: Evidence from EC Merger Proceedings (August 1, 2011). ESRC Centre for Competition Policy Working Paper No. 11-12, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1975260 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1975260

Peter L. Ormosi (Contact Author)

Norwich Business School ( email )

Norwich
NR4 7TJ
United Kingdom

University of East Anglia (UEA) - Centre for Competition Policy ( email )

UEA
Norwich Research Park
Norwich, Norfolk NR47TJ
United Kingdom

Compass Lexecon ( email )

United States

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