Alon Klement

• Professor
• Tel Aviv University

This Article studies the Israeli courts’ approach to choice of law in securities class actions against dual-listed companies, and its unexpected adverse effects on Israeli shareholders. Israeli courts apply American law to dual-listed companies, as an inducement for companies to list their shares for trade on the Tel Aviv stock exchange. However, o...

Class actions feature severe agency problems, resulting from the divergence of interests between class members and the class attorney. This article proposes a novel mechanism for selecting the class attorney and aligning her interests with those of the represented class. The mechanism applies a combined percentage and hourly litigation fee structur...

Background: The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has driven many countries to take radical suppression measures. While reducing mortality, these measures result in severe economic repercussions, and inhibit the development of herd immunity. Until an effective vaccine will be available, we propose an alternative approach, akin to avalanche control at ski r...

Under the standard model in law and economics, agents maximize expected profit subject to constraints set by legal rules. In such a model, the expected reaction to legal innovations is immediate. However, this is not what we observe after class actions have been introduced into Israeli law. For a long time, the new procedure was rarely utilized. Th...

Unlike most countries, the United States and Israel have employed the class action procedure for decades. This Article compares the two countries’ class action regimes and examines how the device has evolved in those countries. It examines the current procedures, as well as proposed reforms. It also compares class action statistics in the two count...

The state and charitable institutions provide in-kind services for distributive purposes. Such services generally benefit recipients but in particular instances may also cause them harm. We discuss the optimal tort regime that should apply when such harm occurs. We show that the optimal level of care applicable to such services is lower than if the...

It is a deeply-entrenched principle in the law of misrepresentation that a false statement can be actionable only upon a showing of reliance. In order to prevail, plaintiffs must establish not only that a misstatement was wrongly conveyed, but also that they were exposed to the information, acted upon it, and suffered harm as a consequence. A mere...

We propose an analytical framework for evaluating the effectiveness of class actions, in which their costs are estimated against the benefits they produce in attaining three objectives: law enforcement and deterrence; access to courts; and compensation. We outline parameters for measuring the social costs and benefits relevant to these objectives a...

We seek to contribute to an understanding of how judicial elections affect the incentives and decisions of judges. We develop a theoretical model suggesting that judges who are concerned about their reputation will tend to decide against their prior decisions as they approach elections. That is, judges who imposed a large number of severe sentences...

A deeply entrenched principle in the law of fraud and negligent misrepresentation provides that damages can be recovered only upon a showing of reliance. To prevail, plaintiffs must not only establish the mere falsity of a statement, but also show that they had acted upon the statement and sustained injury as a consequence. Despite the intuitive ap...

The Supreme Court's recent decisions in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal have generated a heated debate over which is the most just and efficient transsubstantive pleading standard. Unlike the vast scholarship that followed these decisions, we do not take sides in this debate. Instead, we focus on a subset of cases in which liti...

We review the literature on negative-expected-value suits (NEV suits) – suits in which the plaintiff would obtain a negative expected return from pursuing the suit all the way to judgment. We discuss alternative theories as to why, and when, plaintiffs with NEV suits can extract a positive settlement amount. In particular, we explain how such a pla...

Modification and waiver of procedural rules are commonplace between litigants during trial. Yet, contracting parties may also want to modify the rules of procedure before the dispute arises. This paper analyzes the motivations behind pre-dispute procedural arrangements, which we call contractualized procedures, and their implications over the enfor...

The early literature on litigation and settlement assumed that a plaintiff’s threat to litigate is credible only when her litigation value—the difference between the expected judgment and her litigation costs—is positive. More recently, however, Bebchuk (1996) has suggested that even if the plaintiff’s litigation value is negative, divisibility of...