August 18, 2008

Regarding the Massachusetts Supreme Court's recent unilateral liberalization of the doctrine, one of the same questions I keep asking also bothers Anthony Sebok: why are less-than-even probabilities supposed to be taken into account for the purposes of increasing recoveries, but never for reducing them? Thus a 49 cent likelihood of negligent harm will now pay off at 49 cents on the dollar, while a 51 percent likelihood will pay off not at 51 cents, but at 100, as before. Awfully convenient, that, no?