Monday, August 19, 2013
The Chamber's Institute for Legal Reform recently released International Comparisons of Litigation Costs: Europe, the United States and Canada. From the description:
The purpose of this study is to compare liability costs – a phrase used here to describe the costs of claims, whether resolved through litigation or other claims resolution processes – as a fraction of GDP across Europe, the U.S. and Canada. General liability insurance sold to companies provides a basis for comparison because it covers similar types of liability costs in each country....
Key findings are as follows:
The U.S. has the highest liability costs as a percentage of GDP of the countries surveyed, with liability costs at 2.6 times the average level of the Eurozone economies (see Figure 1).
U.S. liability costs are four times higher than those of the least costly European countries in our study – Belgium, the Netherlands and Portugal.
- Although the U.S. has by far the most costly liability system, our analysis shows that liability costs in the U.K., Germany and Denmark have risen between 13% and 25% per year since 2008.