TY  - JOUR
AU  - Carvell,Daniel
AU  - Currie,Janet
AU  - MacLeod,W. Bentley
TI  - Accidental Death and the Rule of Joint and Several Liability
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15412
PY  - 2009
Y2  - October 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15412
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15412.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Daniel Carvell
Department of Economics
Columbia University
420 W 118th St., New York NY 10027
E-Mail: dnc2101@columbia.edu

Janet Currie
Princeton University
316 Wallace Hall
Princeton, NJ 08544
Tel: 609-258-7393
Fax: 609-258-5974
E-Mail: jcurrie@princeton.edu

W. Bentley MacLeod
Department of Economics
Columbia University
420 West 118th Street, MC 3308
New York, NY 10027
Tel: 310-571-5083
Fax: 212/854-4782
E-Mail: bentley.macleod@columbia.edu
AB  - Reforms to the Joint and Several Liability rule (JSL) are one of the most common tort reforms and have been implemented by most US states. JSL allows plaintiffs to claim full recovery from one of the defendants, even if that defendant is only partially responsible for the tort. We develop a theoretical model that shows that the efficiency of the JSL rule depends critically on both whether the care taken by potential tortfeasors is observed, and on how the actions of the potential tortfeasors interact to cause the harm. We then provide evidence that reforms of the JSL rule have been accompanied by reductions in the accidental death rate in the U. S. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that the reform of JSL causes potential tortfeasors to take more care.
ER  -