The New York Times reports on a study to be published in the September issue of Journal of Empirical Legal Studies that analyzes whether the parties in a lawsuit would be better off settling or going to trial. Being The Times, they lead with the plaintiffs’ angle—“most of the plaintiffs who decided to pass up a settlement offer and went to trial ended up getting less money than if they had taken that offer.”

Of greater importance for our point of view is the trial outcome showed that defendants were wrong to go to trial in only 24 percent of cases. (There is, however, a big, fat, greasy fly-in-this-ointment. Plaintiffs who got it wrong shelled out an average of about $43,000. Defendants who got it wrong shelled out an average of $1.1 million.)