LSAT 138 – Section 2 – Question 21

LSAT 138 - Section 2 - Question 21

December 2012

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT138 S2 Q21
+LR
Point at issue: disagree +Disagr
Net Effect +NetEff
A
12%
159
B
12%
160
C
3%
156
D
12%
162
E
61%
167
150
160
169
 +Hardest 147.395 +SubsectionMedium

Justine: Pellman, Inc. settled the lawsuit out of court by paying $1 million. That Pellman settled instead of going to trial indicates their corporate leaders expected to lose in court.

Simon: It’s unclear whether Pellman’s leaders expected to lose in court. But I think they expected that, whether they won or lost the case, the legal fees involved in going to trial would have been more costly than the settlement. So settling the lawsuit seemed the most cost-effective solution.

Speaker 1 Summary
Justine doesn’t make an argument, because there’s no support structure to her claims. Justine just states that a company, Pellman, recently settled a lawsuit. She then expresses her opinion that the decision to settle shows that Pellman expected to lose in court.

Speaker 2 Summary
Simon’s claims support an unstated conclusion that settling doesn’t give evidence about Pellman’s expectation to lose in court. Why not? Because Pellman’s leaders likely expected the court fees not to be worth it even if they won, making settlement the cheapest option. This detaches the decision to settle from Pellman’s predictions about the case’s success.

Objective
We’re looking for a point of disagreement between Justine and Simon. They disagree about whether Pellman’s decision to settle a case shows that Pellman expected to lose.

A
If the lawsuit against Pellman had gone to trial, it is likely that Pellman would have lost in court.
Neither speaker makes this claim. Justine and Simon’s discussion is about whether they can tell that Pellman expected to lose in court. That’s a distinct question from the actual odds of the case.
B
Pellman’s corporate leaders were able to accurately estimate their chances of winning in court.
Neither Justine nor Simon talks about whether Pellman’s corporate leaders made an accurate prediction about their odds in court. They’re still trying to figure out what the prediction was in the first place.
C
If Pellman’s legal fees for going to trial would have been more costly than the settlement, then settling the lawsuit was the most cost-effective solution for the corporation.
Simon agrees with this, but Justine never disagrees. Justine just doesn’t discuss the role of cost-effectiveness in Pellman’s decision to settle.
D
If Pellman’s corporate leaders had expected that the legal fees for going to trial would have been less costly than the settlement, they would have taken the lawsuit to trial.
Neither speaker makes this claim. Simon is the only one who talks about cost-effectiveness as a factor in Pellman’s decision, but he never says that lower legal fees would have guaranteed Pellman would have gone to court.
E
If Pellman’s corporate leaders had expected to win in court, then they would not have settled the lawsuit out of court for $1 million.
Justine agrees and Simon disagrees, so this is their disagreement. Justine claims settling shows that Pellman expected to lose, meaning they would not have settled otherwise. Simon thinks they would have settled whatever their odds, because it’s less expensive than court.

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LSAT PrepTest 138 Explanations

Section 1 - Reading Comprehension

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

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