Meiring de Villiers

article

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure42(b) allows the separation of a civil trial into two or more components when such a separation would promote convenience, fairness and economy. The separate components are then tried successively. When a case is separated into two components, such as the separate adjudication of liability and damages in a tort action, the procedure is referred to as \"bifurcation.\" This article presents an analysis of the legal and policy implications of trial bifurcation in product liability litigation. an analysis of the information integration and group compromise inherent in the jury decision, within the framework of applicable procedural rules, predicts that bifurcation will give an \"a priori\" lower likelihood of a liability verdict and higher expected damages conditional on a liability verdict, compared to a unitary trial of the same case. Furthermore, the (unconditional) expected damage award is greater for bifurcated trials than for unitary trials when evidence of liability is strong, while the converse is true for marginal cases. We show that these predictions are consistent with empirical evidence based on reported case decisions, as well as experimental studies with simulated juries. A final section discusses public welfare implications of policies that would ecourage increased use of trial bifurcation.

Stanford University

Columbia Business Law Review

de Villiers

2

153-197

2000

Dept. of Management Science and Engineering

2001-01-01

I. Introduction............................154 II. Liability and Damages.......159 A. Standard of Liability.........160 B. The Constitutional Civil Jury.....................................163 1. Cross-section requirement................164 2. Absence of bias.........166 C. Liability and Damages: The Miracle of \"Vicarious Settlement\".......................168 1. Constitutional jury and liability.................169 2. Vicarious settlement...................171 3. A Quantitative model of vicarious settlement...................173 4. Empirical evidence of vicarious settlement..................177 III. An Analysis of the Effect of Bifurcated Litigation on Trial Outcome...............................182 A. Expected damages.........188 B. Expected damages conditional on a finding of liability...........................189 C. Probability of a liability verdict................................190 IV. Empirical Validation..........190 V. A Public Policy Perspective...........................192 VI. Conclusion..........................196

2000

bifurcated litigation, liability, vicarious settlement

English

Trial bifurcation vs. unitary in liability cases