Apologies and Legal Settlement: An Empirical Examination
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The conventional wisdom has been that U.S. legal culture discourages apologies. Defendants worry that apologies will be admissible at trial and interpreted as admissions of responsibility. In recent years, however, legal scholars have debated the merits of encouraging parties to apologize. Proponents of apologies claim that apologies will avert lawsuits and promote settlement. Consistent with this view, legislatures in several states have enacted statutes that make certain apologies inadmissible. In addition, some have argued that defendants might craft their apologies to better insulate them from legal liability (e.g., offering a mere expression of sympathy) in order to reap the benefits of apologizing while minimizing the risks. On the other side, however, critics of these so-called safe apologies have argued that apologies that avoid the legal consequences of apologizing are devoid of moral content and likely ineffectual. Much of this debate, however, has occurred in the absence of sound empirical data._
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