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Go for That Settlement, Study Says
"Better the devil you know than the devil you don't." That old saw has long summed up my attitude about litigation. Part of my practice is as a mediator, and I strongly believe that a settlement is almost always better than litigation. Why? Because a settlement is a product of mutual agreement. Both sides walk away from the table having made a bargain they both agree they can live with. By contrast, litigation is a crap shoot. Let someone else decide your fate, and more often than not you'll be unhappy with the outcome -- even if you "prevail."
A new study backs me up on this -- but only part way. As reported in yesterday's New York Times, the soon-to-be-released study of civil lawsuits found that most plaintiffs who pass up settlement and go to trial end up with less than if they'd settled. "The lesson for plaintiffs is," said Randall L. Kiser, a co-author of the study and principal analyst at litigation consulting firm DecisionSet, "in the vast majority of cases, they are perceiving the defendant's offer to be half a loaf when in fact it is an entire loaf or more."
Plaintiffs who opted for trial over settlement were wrong 61 percent of the time, the study found. But defendants made the wrong decision about going to trial far less often, in just 24 percent of cases. "In just 15 percent of cases," the NYT reports, "both sides were right to go to trial -- meaning that the defendant paid less than the plaintiff had wanted but the plaintiff got more than the defendant had offered." The study will be published in the September issue of the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies.
Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on August 8, 2008 at 05:24 PM | Permalink
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