George L. Priest

Known for the Priest-Klein selection hypothesis regarding the probability of litigation outcomes. The article analyzes when lawsuits are tried rather than settled, conjecturing that trials should result in 50-50 success rates of plaintiffs and defendants, and formulates conditions under which the 50% rule would not hold. This article introduced the concept of selection bias into legal literature and was a catalyst for litigation models and empirical research directed at the 50% rule. It has been cited well over 1500 times, including nearly 100 times in law reviews in the past two years, despite being published more than 25 years earlier. Priest also made contributions in the products liability field with an intellectual history of the development of modern tort law that questioned the prevailing views, as well as an analysis of consumer product warranties that reoriented the discourse by introducing an investment theory of their function, in contrast to the prevalent exploitation and signal approaches, providing empirical support and showing, counter-intuitively, how the modern development of warranty law likely increased, rather than decreased, product losses, including personal injury losses.