AbstractIn most jurisdictions, the burden of producing evidence on a contested issue traditionally falls on plaintiffs. In a tort claim, this de facto creates a presumption of non-negligence in favor of injurers. Some legal systems in Europe placed renewed attention on “presumed liability” rules, which instead create a presumption of negligence against injurers. In this paper, we analyze the effects of alternative legal presumptions on parties’ care incentives in the presence of discovery errors. Differently from what was suggested in prior research, we show that legal presumptions do affect primary behavior: presuming that the injurer was (not) negligent strengthens (weakens) his care incentives in situations where the plaintiff faces probatory difficulties. We analyze how these effects should inform the choice of evidence regimes to improve the robustness of liability rules, and to minimize the dilutive effect of imperfect discovery on individuals’ care incentives.

中文翻译：

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过失推定会激励最佳预防措施吗？

摘要在大多数司法管辖区，就有争议的问题提供证据的责任传统上落在原告身上。在侵权索赔中，这事实上创造了有利于加害人的非疏忽推定。欧洲的一些法律制度重新关注“推定责任”规则，这些规则反而对加害者造成了过失推定。在本文中，我们分析了在存在发现错误的情况下替代法律推定对当事人关心激励的影响。与先前研究中的建议不同，我们表明法律推定确实会影响主要行为：在原告面临缓刑困难的情况下，假设加害者（不）疏忽会加强（削弱）他的护理动机。