ARTICLE REVIEW

The Robin Hood Bias: A Study Of Biased Damage

Awards
Author: Brian C. Becker
Source: Journal of Forensic Economics, Vol. 9, No.
3 (Fall 1996), pp. 249-259

Submitted by
DISHA BASNET

Batch:2018-23 Programme of Study:BA-LLB Division:E

PRN:18010223077

Symbiosis Law School, NOIDA Symbiosis International

(Deemed University), Pune

In
January,2019

Under the guidance of

Mr Ankur Sharma
PROFESSOR
Symbiosis Law School, NOIDA Symbiosis International
(Deemed University)
 CERTIFICATE

The Article review of the article having title “The Robin Hood Bias: A Study
Of Biased Damage Awards “ authored by Brian C. Becker has been
submitted to the Symbiosis Law School, NOIDA for Law of Torts, MV
Accident and Consumer Protection Laws II as part of Internal assessment
is based on my original work carried out under the guidance of Mr Ankur
Sharma. The research work has not been submitted elsewhere for award
of any degree.

The material borrowed from other sources and incorporated in the research
work has been duly acknowledged.

I understand that I myself could be held responsible and accountable for

plagiarism, if any, detected later on.

Signature of the candidate

Date:
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to convey my deep sense of gratitude to my subject teacher

Mr. Ankur Sharma for his constant support and guidance in completion of
this project . Furthermore , I would like to thank the library in charge ,Mr
Shriram Sharma who helped me in finding books on my project topic in the
library . Last but not the least I would like to convey a special thanks to my
friends who stood by me whenever required in the entire process of this
project completion . Warm thanks to all and especially my professor who
gave me this opportunity to do this wonderful project and while making this
project I learned a lot of new skills and thus increased my information on
the very topic .
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

BRIEF SUMMARY

RESULTS

CONTRIBUTIONS

FOUNDATIONS

SYNTHESIS WITH CONCEPTS

ANALYSIS

GENERAL CRITIQUE

RELEVANCE

QUESTIONS

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
 INTRODUCTION

The article talks about an experimental phenomena called the “Robin Hood
Bias “which is the effect of of defendant’s wealth on the verdict passed by
the American jurors that is the judgement rendered against poor defendant
in comparison to the judgement given against wealthy defendants .In most
of the cases seen the jurors asked wealthy defendants to pay more than
the poor ones and hence came this bias. The jurors could have an idea
about the defendant’s wealth based on his insurances (allowed as evidence
in intentional torts), profession (doctor, banker) and familiarity with a
corporation name (McDonalds, Starbucks). It is called as Robin Hood Bias
because Robin Hood was a person who stole from rich and gave it to the
poor and even though technically he was a criminal but the people felt that
the rich deserved their goods to be taken as they were tyrannical. Hence
the cause of Robin Hood Bias, the types of cases intentional and
unintentional and the factors on which the bias depends this will be studied.
To understand this article the person should have knowledge about basic
legal terms like tort and its two types ie intentional and unintentional,
compensatory and punitive damages and when it should be granted and
rational mind-set while looking into the experimental cases studied, so
people studying law, judges, lawyers can understand it.
Article domain is compensatory damages and punitive damages .The
objective of the article is to reach conclusion on whether there exists a bias
or not and to have a clear idea about compensatory damages .
 BRIEF SUMMARY

The problem being put forward is the how the defendants’ wealth affects
the jury’s decision on the compensation awarded to the plaintiff which is
more for the rich and hence biased .Since the real tort cases were not
possible to find to suit the requirements, fictional cases were made.
While looking for the bias , the factors studied were the impact of insurance
,whether the defendant made a good or bad decision ,the impact of case of
an individual vs. corporate defendant ,and the type of tort ( In America tort
cases are of two types i.e. intentional and unintentional , unintentional tort
cases lead to payment of compensatory damages while intentional lead to
payment of both compensatory and punitive damage). Compensatory
damages are given to the plaintiff for the loss suffered by him while punitive
is given in addition to compensatory and is given as punishment.
To understand the Robin Hood bias, two types of survey were conducted
on people of age 18-50 .First batch included normal people, some
undergraduate students, and graduate students. The second group
consisted of people studying undergraduate course in decision science
.These people were supposed to act as jurors and give decision based on
the cases. The only rule of evidence given was the admissibility of evidence
establishing the defendant’s wealth .At first actual tort cases were
considered but it proved impractical as it was not possible to find similar
tort cases and similar torts with same compensation asked, it was also
influenced by the time of trial and place .And the fact that wealthy
defendants could afford better attorney than the poor ones. So fictional tort
cases were made, five of which were intentional and five of which were
unintentional and the wealth of defendant varied in each case .The first
survey had wealthy defendants in odd number while poor defendants in
even number and this was the opposite with second survey.
A Robin Hood Bias would be seen as a result of these surveys if the wealthy
defendants in the ten cases were assessed more money in compensatory
damages than the poor defendants. The amount of bias involving corporate
defendants (cases 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, and 10) was compared with the amount
of bias in cases involving individual defendants (cases 5, 7, and 9). Another
comparison was made between unintentional torts (cases 1-5) and
intentional torts (cases 6-10). Punitive damages was also examined, but it
was doubtful whether any conclusions about the Robin Hood Bias can be
drawn from their results as mentioned above.
 RESULTS

Compensatory Damages- Compensatory damage assessments between

the wealthy and poor defendants for all ten case summaries was compared
and rank sum analysis was performed. A Mann-Whitney rank statistici was
computed for each of the ten case summaries (Lehmann, 1975)ii. To
compare more than one case at a time, the z-statistics was summed from
each case to get a new z statistics.iii Such a procedure showed that the sum
of the ranks for poor defendant survey types were significantly below those
of the wealthy defendant survey types and hence there was positive bias
regarding compensatory damage against wealthy defendants in both the
series. The factors like insurance and the decision based on it was studied
and only six people out of thirty considered insurance and only one out of
six’s decision was affected by it. After this the decision on the same of tort
was evaluated for wealthy and poor defendants but it did not prove
anything. Finally the type of tort which showed more bias had to be
evaluated and the second series showed more bias against the first series
for unintentional tort cases and in intentional tort cases the bias statistics
was similar . Comparing the respective significance of the Robin Hood Bias
was also performed for individual defendants versus corporate defendants
and summing these cases Robin Hood Bias existed in both the first and the
second .
Punitive damage-Since no conclusion could be drawn from higher punitive
damage assessments against wealthy defendants regarding robin hood bias
and hence tests were done just to decide whether higher payments were
assessed or not and it came positive on both the series and hence wealth
was really assessed .
 CONTRIBUTIONS

Since no prior research was done in this particular field so this was the only
experiment to look into the bias involved in decisions rendered against poor
and wealthy defendants in similar tort cases so this experiment did make
one think beyond traditional thinking standards as a normal person and as
according to what is always set is that that decision rendered should be
based on the principle of equity and natural justice and right to equality
under article 14 as everyone is equal before law .The article does prove a
valid point but the method to prove it is quite unfeasible as it has certain
limitations and these external factor can be met .

FOUNDATIONS

Since there is less research done in this area but related areas like awarding
compensation to victims of misfortune suggested that “compensation
decisions are affected by irrelevant variables” variables" (Ritov, Hodes and
Baron, 1989)like damages awarded to the victims of misfortune .It was
found that it greatly depended on the way the misfortune was caused . An
earlier study with mock juries gave results supporting the hypothesis that
"...attitude and outcome knowledge exercise their influence upon the
damage award decision" (Casper, Benedict, and Perry,1987) and hence
showed “curse of knowledge “( Camerer, Lowenstein, Weber,1988).And
this is relevant because it will determine whether this knowledge would
influence the jurors while deciding compensation in tort cases.

SYNTHESIS WITH CONCEPTS

The whole article talks about the impact of wealth of defendant on the
compensatory damages how it is against biased against the rich so this in
contrast to the whole concept of equity which states that everyone is equal
in the eyes of law and shall not be discriminated against, no matter what
so why should the damages be greater for rich people for same tort .The
whole idea of the article just neglects the basic tenets of principle of natural
justice on discriminatory basis.
 ANALYSIS

Since the given article only gives results of a small survey, further research
is necessary to have a deeper look into insurance policy considerations and
decision rating. Robin Hood Bias was something coined by the author and
a really interesting concept but the factors on which the experiment had to
be done were quite impossible so hypothetical situations had to be made
as finding tort cases with same torts at same time period and with similar
compensation was difficult and there other clauses too like the admissibility
of insurance as an evidence. The survey anticipated a lot more things than
what was actually proved at last but overall it was a good concept.
The theory was not something proven but a mere experiment so it would
not be fair to say that it does apply to the real world because the ideas do
sound rational and logical but unless proven they cannot hold any value in
the minds of rational person . The author did try to resolve the issue but
much more is needed and a lot is missing out of the research.

RELEVANCE

The given article is only an experiment proved through mathematical

formula and the experiment done was on fictional cases and had certain
limitations which could not be met and hence does not have any impact.

QUESTIONS

 Could other factors have an influence over the Robin Hood Bias like
the anonymity of defendants i.e. large corporations, perceived
wealth based on profession etc.?
 What type of people (wealthy, elderly, male etc.) display this bias
the most?
.
 GENERAL CRITIQUE

There are many shortcomings with the experiment proposed as juries may
consider the possibility of insurance policies but in most cases they do not
actually know if the defendant or plaintiff is insured nor have the results
proven that higher damage awards were given due to the presence of
insurance so what was intended was not actually proven .
Neither did the survey series' support that "bad" decisions made by the
defendant would lead the juror to assess a higher damage award. This task
of asking subjects to decide whether the decision proved too difficult or
vague for the subjects and hence the subjects' ratings may not have been
an accurate indication of their true feelings regarding it.
Also here was no statistical difference in the Robin Hood Bias between
Individual and corporate defendants. While the differences in compensatory
damage assessments between wealthy and poor defendants likely suggests
a bias, there may be at least one other "economically rational" explanation.
Potential jurors may estimate damages as "a range" of values. Within this
range, they may then discriminate using a marginal utility argument; i.e.,
the wealthy defendant should pay more. Also punitive damages do not
enter into Robin Hood Bias as these damages are quite obviously assessed
more heavily against wealthy defendants than poor ones, but this does not
necessarily prove any bias exists due to utility theory. A lot was thought by
the author but very little was proven and this was merely an experiment
based on fictional cases done one mere students so it’s not valid and does
not hold much credibility.
 ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Baron, J., and J. C. Hershey, Outcome Bias in Decision Evaluation,

(working pa per), University of Pennsylvania, 1988.
2. Camerer, C., Generalizations of Expected Utility Theory (working
paper), 1989.
3. Settings: An Experimental Analysis , (working paper), 1988.
4. Caretta, T. R. and R. L. Moreland, "The Direct and Indirect Effects of
Inadmissible Evidence," Journal of Applied Social Psychology , 1983,
13, 291309.
5. Casper, J. D., K. Benedict, and J. L. Perry, Jury Decision Making,
Attitudes, and the Hindsight Bias, Working Paper No. 17, 1987, The
Dispute Resolution Center, J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of
Management, Northwestern University.
6. Coase, R., "The Problem of Social Cost," Journal of Law and
Economics , 1960, 3, 1-44.
7. Huber, P., Liability, 1988, Basic Books, Inc.
8. Kagan, S., "The Additive Fallacy," Ethics , October 1988, 5-32.
9. Lehmann, E., Non-Parametrics: Statistical Methods Based on Ranks ,
1975, Holden Day Publishing Co.

i
This has been shown to be an effective and powerful way to compare ranked items
ii
2 Such a procedure essentially sums the ranks of the compensatory damage responses for the respondents
that filled out a survey with the poor defendants (this particular procedure then divides that sum by 2
iii
We can do this because the sum of independent normal distributions is itself a normal distribution. We
assume that the cases in the survey are independent. They may not be exactly independent, but due to the
nature of the survey, they could be either positively or negatively correlated.