Buying the Verdict

Abstract

We document evidence that firms systematically increase specialized, locally targeted advertising following the firm being taken to trial in that given location, precisely following initiation of the suit. In particular, we use legal actions brought against publicly traded firms over the 20-year sample period that progress to trial between 1995 and 2014. In terms of magnitude, the increase is sizable: targeted local advertising increases by 23% (t = 4.37) following the suit. They focus their advertisement spikes specifically toward jury trials, and in fact specifically toward the most likely jury pool. Last, we document that these advertising spikes are associated with verdicts, increasing the probability of a favorable outcome. This paper was accepted by Tomasz Piskorski, finance. Funding: We gratefully acknowledge funding from the National Science Foundation [Grant SciSIP-1535813]. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4896 .