Torts - Cases, Principles, and Institutions Fifth Edition, 2016a

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Witt & Tani, TCPI 1. Introduction Tort Costs as Percentage of GDP 2.50% 2.00% 1.50% 1.00% 0.50% 0.00% 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 Source: Towers-Watson data. Even with the slower growth of recent years, the figures for transfers and administrative costs in tort law are far higher in the United States than in any comparable legal system or economy. Comparative Tort Costs as a Percentage of GDP in 2000 U.S. Italy Germany Spain Belgium Japan Switzerland U.K. France Denmark Poland 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 Source: Tillinghast-Towers Perrin, U.S. Tort Costs and Cross-Border Perspectives: 2005 Update. 12
Witt & Tani, TCPI 1. Introduction There is at least one country where tort costs as a percentage of GDP are near zero: New Zealand simply abolished tort law for virtually all injuries forty years ago, replacing it with a system of social insurance. One of the things we will want to be able to make sense of by the end of this book is why the tort system is so much bigger in the United States than it is in other countries. The answer, it turns out, is not about the substantive doctrines of American tort law, which more or less resemble the substantive tort doctrines of other developed legal systems. The real difference in American tort law lies in its institutions and procedures: jury trials, discovery, a plaintiffs’ bar whose fees are contingent percentages of the plaintiff’s ultimate recovery, and relatively restrictive programs of social provision. One recent study of 24 countries, for example, finds a strong negative relationship between the generosity of government social programs, on the one hand, and tort liability, on the other, after controlling for income, accident rates, and other factors. See Dana A. Kerr, Yu-Luen Ma, & Joan T. Schmit, A Cross-National Study of Government Social Insurance as an Alternative to Tort Liability Compensation, 76 J. RISK & INSURANCE 367 (2009). It is worth noting that the data cited above, regarding torts costs in the U.S., is hotly controversial: it comes from a consultant to the insurance industry now named Towers-Watson, formerly Tillinghast or Towers-Perrin. Critics contend that the Towers-Watson data is misleading and tendentious and that the insurance industry aims to use it to promote legislation that would reduce tort costs and thus serve the interests of insurers and the tort defendants they insure. See, e.g., Lawrence Chimerine & Ross Eisenbrey, The Frivolous Case for Tort Law Change, ECON. POL’Y INST. (May 16, 2005), https://perma.cc/6BRJ-UYP5. The critics complain both that certain elements of the cost calculation, such as insurance executive compensation, ought to be excluded, and that Towers-Watson and its predecessors misstate the concept of costs in the tort system. Both critiques have some force. The latter critique in particular has obvious merit. Why, after all, call the monetary transfers in the tort system the “costs” of tort law? The costs might much better be described as the underlying injuries plus avoidance costs plus the costs of administering claims when injuries happen. Is it a “cost” when tort law transfers money from wrongdoer to victim? Or is it a “cost” when a wrongdoer injured the victim in the first place? For a general theory of the sum of accident costs, see GUIDO CALABRESI, THE COSTS OF ACCIDENTS (1970). Despite the criticisms, however, there is also a good reason to use the insurers’ data as a basic measure of the tort system. For the startling thing about tort law in the United States is that insurers’ private information is the only way we can even possibly begin to grasp the full size and scope of the tort system. This is worth emphasizing again: the biggest insurers and only the biggest insurers are in a position to see the macro trends in the field. The reason is that the pervasiveness of private settlement ensures that there is no public repository of information about the fate of most tort claims, sometimes virtually all tort claims. Nothing in the law of torts or in the law of settlement contracts even requires that a claim be filed with a court before it is contractually extinguished in a settlement agreement. To the contrary, the parties can save money on the cost of drafting and filing a complaint and share those savings between them if they settle before filing the claim in a courthouse. There is thus often not even a single trace in the public record of a tort claim, even one that produces a substantial settlement. Indeed, many plaintiffs receive higher settlement awards precisely in return for their promise to keep the terms of the settlement and even the fact of their claim confidential—promises that are enforceable under current law, despite the protests of many well-positioned observers. 13
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