After the Crash: Citizens' Perceptions of Connective-Tissue Injury Lawsuits

Vadino, Nicole

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1012392

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Identifying these tipping points and better understanding what drives attitudes toward tort represent promising avenues of inquiry. The possibilities are numerous, from how people attribute fault, blame, and responsibility (see Bartels et al, 2016;Doherty, 2006;Iyengar, 1991Iyengar, , 1996Stoker, 1996), to the affective states related to the underlying injury scenarios (Engel, 1984;Hans, 2007), to social identity and biases (Huddy, 2001;Skitka, 2010). All warrant further investigation using appropriate research designs and measures, including designs that leverage insights from rich qualitative work that is a hallmark of law and society scholarship as well as the growing number of quantitative and experimental tools geared toward causal inference.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tort tales and total justice: Exploring attitudes toward everyday tort claims for workplace injuries

Barnes,

Hevron,

Menounou

2023

Law Soc Rev

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Despite some retrenchment, the litigation state remains alive and well. All this litigation has engendered intense debates over whether increased lawsuits represent a rising tide of justice or a flood of frivolous claims. Tort law has been at the center of these debates for decades, standing at the fault line between “tort tale,” “total justice,” and “mixed” narratives about the perils and benefits of litigation. In this article, we use a survey experiment to probe attitudes toward claims for workplace injuries in light of these narratives. We find that our participants held multifaceted views. On one hand, they favored making claims over doing nothing or asking family members for help and saw lawsuits as equally appropriate as filing a government claim or hiring a lawyer to send a demand letter. On the other hand, tort tale themes cast a subtle shadow over our participants' views. When told claimants did not rush to the courts in defiance of tort tale expectations, our participants saw the lawsuit as more justified. Indeed, the more remedies exhausted prior to litigation, the more justifiable the lawsuit seemed, even though repeated denials of claims might undermine faith in their merits. The bottom line, we contend, is that attitudes toward litigation reflect not only the choice of remedy but also how remedies are used, even when the underlying claim is meritorious—a point that could be useful to practitioners and advocates as they weigh claiming options as well as litigation and public communication strategies.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tort tales and total justice: Exploring attitudes toward everyday tort claims for workplace injuries

Barnes,

Hevron,

Menounou

2023

Law Soc Rev

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“…Many of the questions (described in detail below) have been used by attorneys and jury consultants when helping to select juries in actual cases and have been approved for use in voir dire (e.g., In re: Bard IVC Filters Products Liability Litigation , 2018). The others were derived from previous research on civil juries (Hans, 2000a, 2008; Hans & Vadino, 2007; Lazarus, 1999). Further, many research projects have used variations of the items tapping attitudes toward the civil justice system and tort reform (e.g., Greene et al, 1991; Hans & Lofquist, 1994; Moran et al, 1994).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Likelihood of Fraudulent Claims Scale. This scale comprised three items designed to assess the degree to which participants were predisposed to think that civil cases are due to fraudulent claims or valid claims being denied (Hans & Vadino, 2007;Lazarus, 1999). Depending on whether they judged one of the medical malpractice cases (Wrongful Birth, Medical Malpractice Misdiagnosis) or the Insurance Bad Faith case, participants were asked about medical professionals or insurance companies, respectively.…”

Section: Preexisting Attitudes About Trial Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of minimal versus extended voir dire and judicial rehabilitation on mock jurors’ decisions in civil cases.

Salerno¹,

Campbell²,

Phalen³

et al. 2021

Law and Human Behavior

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Objectives: Three experiments tested the utility of minimal versus extended voir dire questions in predicting mock jurors' verdicts and damage awards, and whether the biasing impact of their preexisting attitudes on case judgments could be reduced by judicial rehabilitation. Hypotheses: We hypothesized that extended voir dire questions would be more predictive of case judgments than minimal voir dire questions. We hypothesized that judicial rehabilitation would not reduce this impact of preexisting attitudes on case judgments. Method: Across three experiments, each focusing on a different civil case (insurance bad faith, wrongful birth, medical malpractice misdiagnosis), online participants (N = 2,041; 62% female; 77% White, 9% African American, 6% Asian/Pacific Islander, 6% Hispanic or Latino/a; M age = 40) were paid MTurk workers. They were randomly assigned to experience (a) no voir dire, minimal voir dire focusing on previous legal experience and self-identification of biases, or extended voir dire focusing on specific attitudes about civil litigation, parties, and laws, and (b) no judicial rehabilitation, or judicial rehabilitation, before judging the case. Participants read a civil case, made case judgments, and completed bias awareness measures. Results: Demographic information and minimal voir dire questions did not predict case judgments, but the majority of extended voir dire responses predicted verdicts and damage awards. Judicial rehabilitation did not reduce the biasing impact of their preexisting attitudes on case judgments-but did result in mock jurors reporting that they were less biased, despite judicial rehabilitation not actually reducing their bias. Conclusions: Attorneys need the opportunity during voir dire to ask jurors about specific attitudes that might bias their decisions because relying on jurors' self-identification of their own biases has little utility. Further, although judicial rehabilitation might make jurors think that they are less biased, it may not actually reduce the impact of their preexisting attitudes on their case decisions. Bradley D. McAuliff served as Action Editor.

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An exploration of psychological and physical injury schemas in civil cases

Vallano

McQuiston

2018

Applied Cognitive Psychology

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SummaryCivil plaintiffs often seek compensation for their psychological injuries. Yet little is known about jurors' preconceived notions (or schemas) for a prospective plaintiff's pain and suffering. The present studies examined (a) whether jurors have psychological injury schemas (Studies 1 and 2), (b) whether their existence and development vary by the type of civil case (Studies 1 and 2) or its severity (Study 2), and (c) how psychological injury schemas compare with physical injury schemas on a number of theoretically and legally relevant judgments (e.g., injury severity, availability, and plaintiff credibility; Study 2). Study 1 (N = 233) presented undergraduate mock jurors with 2 negligence incidents (car accident and slip and fall) and 2 intentional tort incidents (sexual assault and kidnapping) and asked them to report the typical incident and injuries that would result from the defendant's conduct. Results supported the sparse existence of psychological injury schemas but found that they were more developed in the kidnapping and sexual assault incidents than in the car accident and slip and fall incidents. Study 2 (N = 288) additionally manipulated incident schema severity (mild vs. severe) while having participants separately report and rate their psychological and physical injury schemas on judgments of legal and theoretical interest. Results indicated that although mock jurors' psychological injury schemas contained fewer injuries than their physical injury schemas, the reported psychological injuries were rated as more severe than physical injuries. We discuss how schemas may underlie the disparate treatment of psychological and physical injuries by legal decision‐makers.

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After the Crash: Citizens' Perceptions of Connective-Tissue Injury Lawsuits

Cited by 6 publications

References 27 publications

Tort tales and total justice: Exploring attitudes toward everyday tort claims for workplace injuries

Tort tales and total justice: Exploring attitudes toward everyday tort claims for workplace injuries

The impact of minimal versus extended voir dire and judicial rehabilitation on mock jurors’ decisions in civil cases.

An exploration of psychological and physical injury schemas in civil cases

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