ABSTRACT PREDICTION OF LITIGATION PROBABILITY FOR INTERNATIONAL CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS DURING BIDDING STAGE Ayten, ilkay M.S., Department of Civil Engineering Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Rifat S&ouml / nmez February 2010, 102 pages Over the years many researchers agreed that between the parties involved in construction projects such as / owner, contractor, engineer and suppliers trying to perform different scopes in different timetables. Therefore, disputes are inevitable due to the complexity of the work. Occurrence of litigation is the most terrifying process to deal with during any construction project for both owner and the contractor because of the time and money consuming nature of the process. Hence, contractors should try to eliminate any potential risk factors that will lead to litigation. The aim of this study is to investigate the factors that influence court action between parties in international construction projects and develop a statistical model that will predict the litigation probability of an international construction project during bidding stage. The final prediction model revealed that contractual awareness and consciousness of risk factors is the key to predict litigation probability. Considering awareness of the factors affecting litigation probability are displayed in this thesis. Companies may have the opportunity to develop risk assessment and management strategies while reconsidering their contingency estimates.

Illegitimate child is commonly referred to as ¡§bastard,¡¨ which contains the implication of discrimination and original sin from social viewpoint. As far as law is concerned, private law doesn¡¦t provide protection for the rights of illegitimate children, whose mothers are therefore forced to file for compulsory recognition without considering consensus and depreciation to ensure their rights, and this is exactly the canker that ¡§Martial Presumption System,¡¨ which is worth further exploration. As for research method, historical method, comparative method, and citation analysis method and so on are adopted herein so as to cover domestic traditional system as well as foreign system. Furthermore, domestic scholars¡¦ articles on relevant issues are herein analyzed to seek protection for children on Constitution. Laws concerning illegitimate children falls into the category of private Law, for the aspects of relatives and inheritance are relate to legislative system and compulsory regulations which are beyond the governing of private autonomy. Additionally, the regulations of citizen¡¦s basic rights are not stipulated in detail and specifically on Constitution and must be supplemented by Civil Law. Nevertheless, in the respect of illegitimate children¡¦ rights, Civil Law obviously fails to reinforce the regulations of basic rights provided on Constitution. Therefore, it¡¦s a necessity to have it discussed at equal level of Constitution. This essay then focus on protection for children on Constitution and therefore adopts human dignity, personality right, family right, equity, property right, and litigation right recorded on Constitution to build the principal structure and study the protection for the rights of ¡§illegitimate¡¨ children on Constitution. Classifying children into legitimate children and illegitimate children will not only cause confusions in Civil Law system, but convert law into a means to discriminate illegitimate children and then result in public rights impracticable in law. As a result, amendment drafts are proposed herein, taking the abolishment of martial presumption system as the main idea that enables children whether whose parents got married or not to enjoy equal rights with the assistance of children¡¦s rights protection to enable Taiwan¡¦s parent-child relationship to compete with advanced nations.

This dissertation addresses issues in corporate finance. Part I examines the litigation environment of a firm and its impact on financial policy. Chapter 1 discusses prior research, including theory and empirical results, related to firm performance, financial policy, and litigation. It provides the background to support the empirical analyses of Chapters 2 and 3. Chapter 2 examines the wealth effects of litigation events on the firms involved, as well as on their industry peers. I find that litigation events have a strong negative effect on both the firms sued, as well as their competitors. Chapter 3 examines whether managers use financial policy strategically when facing an increased risk of litigation claims. I find that greater litigation exposure leads firms to choose higher leverage. I show that this leverage increase is brought on by an active decision to repurchase shares. These repurchases appear to be financed with a combination of excess cash and short term debt as they coincide with a significant decrease in cash holdings and an increase in short term liabilities. These firms also increase their use of operating leases, which, due to their priority in bankruptcy, have similar characteristics as secured debt. Finally, the effects seem to be stronger for firms with a higher probability of bankruptcy. Part II asks whether there is a disposition effect in corporate investment decisions. Chapter 4 provides a summary of the existing literature related to the disposition effect and discusses both theoretical and empirical findings. In Chapter 5, I utilize the unique nature of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) to test for the presence of the disposition effect in corporate investments. The results show strong statistical evidence that REIT managers tend to sell winners and hold losers, where winners and losers are defined using changes in properties’ prices since they were acquired. In addition, I find evidence that this behavior is consistent with the disposition effect. REIT managers are significantly less likely to sell properties that have a loss relative to a reference point based on inflation or historical average returns, controlling for the properties’ recent returns. / text

Darbe formuluojama ginčų dėl nedidelių sumų nagrinėjimo sąvoka, pristatomi ir apibūdinami šios sumarinio proceso rūšies pagrindiniai procesiniai požymiai, uždaviniai bei tikslai. Analizuojant darbe keliamus klausimus pagrindinis tyrimo objektas buvo šiame procese pagrindinį vaidmenį atliekantis teismas, įstatymų jam suteikta prerogatyva šio proceso atžvilgiu. Autorius analizuoja Lietuvos Respublikos Civilinio proceso kodekse įtvirtintas bylinėjimosi ginčų dėl nedidelių sumų formas ir daro prielaidą, jog šios rūšies procese įstatymo leidėjas teismui suteikia per didelę prerogatyvos teisę. Atsižvelgiant į tai, jog pastarasis procesas laikytinas bylinėjimosi forma, kuria siekiama greitesnio nei įprasta bylos išnagrinėjimo ir nereikalaujama tokio bylos aplinkybių ištyrimo laipsnio, koks yra būtinas nagrinėjant bylas bendrąja ginčo teisena dar nereiškia, jog šalims neturi būti suteikta atstovavimo teisė, ribojama teisė būti išklausytam. Tačiau įvertinant tai, jog yra suteikta galimybė surašyti trumpesnį, supaprastintos formos sprendimą, kuris palengvina teismo bei pagalbinio personalo darbą, nestabdo civilinės apyvartos ilgais bylinėjimosi laikotarpiais ir yra veiksminga proceso koncentruotumo priemonė, teismas savo nuožiūra galėtų ir turėtų labiau populiarinti bei praktikuoti šį civilinio proceso kodekse reglamentuojamą ginčų sprendimo būdą. / In the work Small claims litigation: does the implementation of the Court’s discretion have limits? the conception of Small claims litigation is formulated, the main attributes, goals and objectives of this sort of summary process are determined and described. When analyzing the problems, raised in this work, the main object of the research became the Court, which plays the leading role in this process due to prerogative power, given by the law. The author of this work analyzes the different forms of Small claims litigation, established in the Civil Process Code of the Republic of Lithuania, and makes an assumption that in this sort of process the prerogative power given to the Court by legislative bodies is excessive. Although the process in question is regarded to as a form of litigation, which is used to speed up investigation of a case without requiring the level of fact-finding as high as it is necessary in cases of common legal proceedings, it does not mean that the parties’ should not be given the right to be represented, or their right to be heard should be limited. Considering the fact, that the opportunity has been given to draw up a more concise and streamlined solution, which would facilitate the work of the Court and ancillary staff, would not impede civil turnover with long litigation periods, and would be a good measure of process concentration, the Court at its discretion should put more efforts popularizing and practicing this method of dispute procedure... [to full text]

<p>This research examines the effectiveness of these dispute resolution mechanisms in environmental disputes and what improvements should be made in order to make those mechanisms suitable for these types of disputes.</p>

The intention of this dissertation is to expose the gendered experiences of rape victims, based on the notion that while it should be the purpose of rape laws to protect victims of rape, in many circumstances the legal process results in disempowering experiences for victims, particularly women. Therefore, I suggest that the courtroom, a supposedly just space, is one which is laced with patriarchal undercurrents that work specifically against women. Rape is a complex and multi-faceted subject that is fast becoming an epidemic. In relation to HIV/AIDS and sexuality, the issue of rape certainly becomes compounded. Deconstructing the historical and cultural experiences of women is not only necessary in attempting to understand rape, but also the reasons why the justice system, which is dominantly a male domain, may still cling to patriarchal principles. One reason for the marginalization of rape victims may be the continued regard of women as second class citizens. The rape trial, in which Jacob Zuma was the alleged rapist, is a starting point, and by referring to this case, I intend to reveal and discuss weaknesses with regard to rape law within the South African context. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

This thesis demonstrates the level of environmental disaster that oil TNCs have brought into Sub-Sahara Africa as a direct consequence of economic globalization. The analysis reveals the weaknesses of the environmental regime in the Sub-Sahara African region, particularly in Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon as well as the lack of administrative capacity of the governments. The thesis explores alternative means through which environmental responsibility of oil TNCs could be pursued at the supranational arena and within the legal system of home states of the oil TNCs. It seeks to do so by examining the phenomenon of tort-based action for foreign direct liability of the parent oil TNCs for the conduct of their foreign subsidiaries extraterritorially.

If auditors question a company’s ability to continue existing, they should issue a going concern opinion in the audit report. Whether or not auditors will issue a going concern opinion depends on auditors’ ability to identify going concern problems, as well as their decision whether or not to issue going concern opinions. In Sweden, the going concern accuracy rate has been low compared to other countries. The aim of this study is therefore to analyse whether it is auditors’ lack of ability to identify going concern problems or their decision not to issue a going concern opinion, or perhaps both, that could explain the relatively low accuracy rate. Interviews with four auditors from the Big Four audit firms and four CFOs from middle sized companies were conducted. The results show that there are factors speaking both for and against auditors’ ability to identify going concern problems, why we cannot say for sure whether auditors’ lack of ability to identify going concern problems could be an explanation to the relatively low accuracy rate. The results do however reveal that auditors actively make decisions not to issue going concern opinions to their clients as much as possible, which could explain the relatively low accuracy rate.

This thesis proposes an exception to the common law efficiency hypothesis. In many cases, common law moves toward efficient legal rules through an evolutionary process of litigation incentives. Software patent law has departed from this trend, due to an asymmetric and unopposed set of litigation incentives by parties in precedent setting decisions. This paper evaluates the history of software patent legal rules, using an economic model of litigation incentives. It concludes that software patent law has been driven toward inefficiency due to an asymmetric set of interests between patent filers and administrative agencies.

This paper looks at whether firms’ credit ratings are negatively affected by litigation risk after controlling for known factors that affect credit ratings. The conventional wisdom is that litigation risk and credit ratings have an inverse relationship. However, my hypothesis is that the inverse relationship will not be stable if the model of credit ratings has taken other factors into account. The methodology first constructs a model of litigation risk, and then regress the credit ratings on the measurement of litigation risk. Previous empirical research on litigation risk measurement uses industry proxies as indicators for litigation risk. In this paper, I include firm characteristics and the Beneish M-score (a determinant for earnings manipulation) in addition to the industry proxy to construct an alternative model measuring litigation risk. I find that supplementing the Francis, Philbrick and Schipper (1994a, b; hereafter FPS) industry proxy with measures of firm characteristics improves predictive ability. In the model of credit ratings, I find that the change of litigation risk has a negative correlation with the credit ratings. However, the negative coefficient on the change of litigation risk changes to a positive one after controlling for other variables such as firm size, return on asset, and interest coverage ratio. This finding provides support for the hypothesis that the negative correlation between the credit ratings and litigation risk is not stable. This suggests that credit ratings may not incorporate litigation risk specifically although litigation can lead to firms’ financial damage and reputation crisis. However, the negative coefficient on the change of litigation risk remains unchanged when I control for the year fixed effects. I also find a negative correlation between the year 2007 and credit ratings due to financial crisis. The results are not conclusive given the likely simultaneous determination of litigation risk and credit ratings.