This essay examines the financial reward motivation, over that of correcting public law, of citizen suits filed by environmental groups.
Summary.
July 2006
Unnatural Bounty: Distorting the Incentives of Major Environmental Groups
By Bruce L. Benson
Most environmental statutes allow citizens to sue companies for violating the statutes or their regulations. Most such citizen suits are not filed by individuals, however, but by environmental organizations.
In this essay, Bruce L. Benson, DeVoe Moore Distinguished Research Professor at Florida State University, reveals that the rewards to filing citizen suits, as well as the ease of filing them, have distorted the incentives of some environmental groups. Such groups are putting substantial resources into litigation—even when the litigation involves only minor technical violations rather than environmental harm. The reason appears to be financial reward.
About the Author
BRUCE BENSON studied citizen suits in 2004 as a Julian Simon Fellow with PERC, the Property and Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana. PERC is a nonprofit institute dedicated to improving environmental quality through property rights and markets. This essay is part of the PERC Policy Series, which addresses timely topics involving markets and environmental issues. Essays by Julian Simon Fellows reflect research in the tradition of the late Julian Simon, whose economic research challenged conventional wisdom.
