#21 - Justine: Pellman, Inc. settled the lawsuit

[ShannonOh22]

Hi guys,

Can you please explain why E is the correct answer for this question? I chose B, which states that Justine and Simon disagreed over whether "Pellman's corporate leaders were able to accurately estimate their chances of winning in court". I felt this answer was strongly supported by the stimulus, due to Justine's comment "That Pellman settled instead of going to trial indicates their corporate leaders expected to lose in court.", which is followed immediately by Simon saying "It's unclear whether Pellman's leaders expected to lose in court."

Can you please let me know where and how I went wrong with answer choice B? If one were to ask Justine if Pellman's lawyers were able to accurately estimate their chances of winning", she would say "yes, they expected to lose. That's why they settled". Simon, on the other hand, would argue "no, we don't know enough to say whether or not the leaders were able to predict the outcome." Given the fact that it passes this test, wouldn't answer choice B be correct?

E states "If Pellman's corporate leaders had expected to win in court, they they would not have settled the lawsuit out of court for $1 million." This doesn't invoke the same strength of response from each speaker that B does.

Please help me to understand this, and thank you in advance!!

[Claire Horan]

Hi Shannon,

You've used the proper technique to approach this question, so let's figure out what happened. Before looking at the answer choices, I would summarize Justine's comment as: "Because Pellman settled, we know their corporate leaders expected to lose in court." I would summarize Simon's response as: "We don't know whether Pellman expected to lose. But we know they thought going to trial would cost more than settling, even if they won." Then try to prephrase what they disagree about. Your paraphrase might be something like: They disagree about whether Pellman's choice to settle shows the leaders thought they would lose in court.

Then consider how well the answer choices relate to your prephrase. Let's consider B first. Justine believes that Pellman estimated their chances of winning in court (and found they were low), while Simon says they don't know whether Pellman estimated their chances or not. However, if you read carefully, you'll see that B states the leaders "were able to accurately estimate" their chances. Neither Justine nor Simon expresses an opinion on whether Pellman's leaders had an accurate estimate of their chance of success in court. Justine says only that she knows their prediction based on their decision to settle, and Simon says we don't know if they estimated or not. This choice can be ruled out due to the word "accurately." It also doesn't match very well with the prephrase.

As for E, Justine would agree. We know this because she assumes that their choice to settle is enough for her to know they didn't expect to win. She would not assert that she has this information if she thought they might settle even if they expected to win. Simon would disagree with E. He says they may have settled anyway, due to the high legal costs. As icing on the cake, this choice involves the same issue as our prephrase, so we can be even more confident that we've found the right answer.

When you say, Choice E "doesn't invoke the same strength of response from each speaker that B does," I think you're saying that you were uncomfortable with E because Justine would strongly agree, while Simon might only mildly disagree. Even if that's how you interpret their attitudes, this choice still satisfies the test because they disagree about the statement.

I hope this explanation helps!

[hope]

The administrator's prephrase is unclear to me. Simon clearly stated that it didn't matter if Pellman, Inc. won or lost. That gives me to understand that winning or losing in court was not the disagreement. Justine flat out felt that settlement meant the corporation expected to lose. But Simon felt that point was irrelevant. What was relevant for Simon is the court fees that would surpass the settlement amount regardless of winning or losing at trial.

I think the prephrase should have been something to the effect: Justine and Simon disagrees on the reason Pellman settled. Justine says they settled because they expected to lose. Simon says they settled because even with a win, the court fees would far surpass the settlement amount.

That said, I don't see an answer that matches my prephrase. The closes answer choice that does is "C". Can someone help me out here? Thanks.

[Adam Tyson]

I agree with your prephrase, hope - they disagreed about why the company settled. Justine thinks it is because they knew they would lose, while Simon thinks it was because the cost/benefit analysis dictated that decision. And you're right that none of the answers clearly matches that prephrase.

Where you went wrong is in not recognizing that answer E actually DOES capture that prephrase, but in a somewhat roundabout way. Think of it this way - if the two disagreed about WHY they settled, then they would also have to disagree about what would change that decision. Expecting to win should be enough for Justine, while a different cost/benefit analysis is all that would matter to Simon (if it would cost less to go to court, regardless of the outcome, then Simon would probably say they would have gone to court.)

Answer E focuses on Justine's calculus. If to her, settling means they expected to lose, then not expecting to lose would mean not settling (and you can probably see the possibility of diagramming that conditionally, with a contrapositive). Simon, however would say that expecting to win would have no impact, because it was the cost of going to court that made the decision for them, regardless of outcome. In response to answer E, Justine would have to say "yes, that's exactly what I'm saying," while Simon would respond "nope, that's not relevant, only the cost of trial vs the cost of settlement mattered."

In evaluating answer C, what would Justine say about the most cost-effective strategy? We simply cannot know, because she never addresses it. Maybe yes, maybe no - and that "maybe" means this answer is a loser. The correct answer to a Point at Issue question has to be clearly answered by one party with "no" and the other with "yes," or some other corresponding pair of words in opposition. When you don't know what one of them would say, the whole answer is wrong!

[taketwo]

Hi, could you help explain why D is incorrect? I initially got it down to D and E, but I thought D was more correct than E. In looking back on this question, my guess is that D is wrong because Justine doesn’t discuss anything about legal fees, she is just saying that settling means they expected to lose regardless of fees. But wouldn’t this still mean she disagrees with Simon’s point about why they would or wouldn’t’ go to trial?

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi taketwo,

We can only really pin down Justine to one claim---that the fact of the settlement suggests that Pellman's leaders thought they would lose in court. Our answer choice needs to center on something where we know what each party would say, and that we know they would disagree. Since Justine only focuses on the one element---the idea of winning/losing at trial---that's the only place where we KNOW what she would say about an answer choice. We know she'd say that the fact of the settlement proves they thought they would lose. Simon doesn't think it proves that, and he provides possible alternative situations where they might have settled. At most though, we can say that Justine thinks it proves the belief they'd lose, whereas Simon doesn't think the fact of the settlement is concrete proof of their predicted loss.

The problem with answer choice (D) is that we have no idea what Justine thinks about that possibility. There are lots of reasons that a company would potentially go to trial even if it would be more expensive, as long as they thought they'd win. Justine's statement doesn't address those potential ideas. She only really considers the one possibility that the fact of the settlement is enough to know the company leaders think they'll lose.

Hope that helps!