Nicholas M Pace

Social inflation is a term that has been used to describe social and behavioral trends that are said to expand the liability of parties allegedly responsible for harms and their insurers. In this report, the authors look for trends in litigation rates, trial awards, and insurance claim payments that are consistent with the expected effects of social inflation to determine whether there is evidence that social inflation is occurring.

This report reviews various alternatives to relying exclusively on traditional civil litigation to assign responsibility for the human causes of a catastrophe and to determine the types of losses that a designated responsible party must reimburse. It also reviews examples of circumstances in which statutory substitutes for the traditional tort system have been adopted for dealing with at least some of the consequences of widespread harm.

The authors describe illustrative instances of human-made disasters in which the potentially responsible party (PRP) offered early assistance to the affected community. The authors also explore the benefits and drawbacks of such assistance in stakeholders' eyes and examine potential approaches that policymakers might want to take in encouraging PRPs to provide early assistance.

In 2017, the Michigan Indigent Defense Commission (MIDC) asked the RAND Corporation for assistance in determining maximum caseload standards for providers of indigent legal representation to adult defendants in the trial-level courts of Michigan. This project conducted three data collection efforts to provide an empirical foundation for these standards. The authors present recommended caseload standards based on analysis of the collected data.

Class actions, which are civil cases in which parties initiate a lawsuit on behalf of other plaintiffs not specifically named in the complaint, often make headlines and arouse policy debates. However, policymakers and the public know little about most class actions. This book presents the results of surveys of insurers and of state departments of insurance to learn more about class litigation against insurance companies.

This RAND Institute study of class action lawsuits examines data collected from interviews with case participants, various electronic sources, and court records. It also reviews commentary on the federal class action rule, considers recent attempts to revise the rule, discusses the history of the co