litigating toward settlement
Litigating Toward Settlement (with David A. Hoffman)Civil litigation typically ends when the parties compromise. While existing theories of settlement primarily focus on information exchange, we instead examine how motion practice, especially non-discovery motions, can substantially shape parties’ knowledge about their cases and thereby influence the timing of settlement. Using newly collected federal district court docket-level data, we find a number of strong effects about how motions influence this process, including that the filing of a motion significantly speeds case settlement, that granted motions are more immediately critical to settlement timing than motions denied, and that plaintiff victories have a stronger effect than defendant victories. These results provide a uniquely detailed look at the mechanism of compromise via information exchange and motions practice in litigation while simultaneously yielding evidence that this effect goes well beyond the traditionally studied discovery process.
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