Emotional Adaptation and Lawsuit Settlements

Abstract:     
John Bronsteen, Christopher Buccafusco, and Jonathan Masur argue in Hedonic Adaptation and the Settlement of Civil Lawsuits, 108 Columbia Law Review 1516 (2008) that prolonged litigation allows tort victims to adapt emotionally to even permanent injuries, and hence those lawsuits are more likely to settle and for less than if litigation took less time. This Response demonstrates that such a claim is a facile application of the hedonic adaptation literature with the following three points. First, people care about a lot more than just happiness and unhappiness. Emotions in tort litigation can be cultural evaluations. Tort victims may sue to pursue identity, justice, meaning, or vengeance. In fact, if plaintiffs fear losing litigation options, they are less likely to settle and for more than if their lawsuits proceeded faster. Second, longitudinal and more recent data finds that hedonic adaptation can be very slow and remain incomplete after many years. Third, fostering emotional adaptation via lengthy tort litigation raises a host of ethical issues and normative concerns.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 9

Keywords: emotional adaptation, happiness, litigation, settlement, cultural cognition, meaning, identity, justice, ethics, vengeance

JEL Classification: A12, D60, D63, K00, K13, K40, K41, K49

Accepted Paper Series