 Kaplan was among the first to employ decision theory to develop a framework for setting the probabilistic threshold that represents the standard of proof. Since the attention in this area of the law tends to be on the avoidance of errors and their undesirable consequences, he finds it convenient to focus on disutility rather than utility. The expected disutility of an outcome is the product of the disutility (broadly, the social costs) of that outcome and the probability of that outcome. Only two options are generally available to the court: in criminal cases, it must either convict or acquit the accused and in civil cases, it has to give judgment either for the plaintiff or for the defendant. At a criminal trial, the decision should be made to convict where the expected disutility of a decision to acquit is greater than the expected disutility of a decision to convict. This is so as to minimize the expected disutilities. To put this in the form of an equation: