Litigation Realities

Clermont, Kevin M.; Eisenberg, Theodore

doi:10.2139/ssrn.299459

Cited by 19 publications

(17 citation statements)

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“…The decrease in the volume of cases per doctor is consistent with trends documented widely in the medical malpractice claims literature (Clermont and Eisenberg 2002). To the extent that the results presented in Figures 1-5 reflect the impact of tort reforms, they are consistent with the hypothesis that state reforms decrease the lower end of the distribution of awards without affecting total annual payouts because the number of cases decreased concurrent with an increase in the average award.…”

Section: State-level Analysissupporting

confidence: 85%

An Empirical Study of the Impact of Tort Reforms on Medical Malpractice Settlement Payments

Avraham¹

2007

The Journal of Legal Studies

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This paper evaluates the impact of six different types of tort reforms on the frequency, size, and number of total annual settlements in medical malpractice cases between 1991 and 1998. Medical malpractice data come from the National Practitioner Data Bank, which contains more than 100,000 malpractice settlement payments in the study time frame. Of the six tort reforms examined, two reforms (caps on pain and suffering damages and limitations on joint and several liability) reduced the number of annual payments, and two reforms (caps on pain and suffering damages and the periodic-payment reform) reduced average awards. Caps on noneconomic damages had an effect on total annual payments, although the statistical significance of that effect was weak. The joint effect of enacting all six reforms was statistically significant for reducing the number of cases but not the state-level average award or total payments. (c) 2007 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved..

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Section: State-level Analysissupporting

confidence: 85%

An Empirical Study of the Impact of Tort Reforms on Medical Malpractice Settlement Payments

Avraham¹

2007

The Journal of Legal Studies

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“…Clermont and Eisenberg found a federal court appeals outcome tilt favoring defendants who lost either judge or jury trials. 85 Although our findings are consistent with these federal appeals findings, our results are narrower in that they only highlight defendant jury losses at trial. Do these findings imply that juries exert a level of pro-plaintiff bias that accounts for the overall perceived pro-plaintiff bias at the trial court level?…”

Section: Implications For the Attitudinal Hypothesissupporting

confidence: 81%

Plaintiphobia in State Courts Redux? An Empirical Study of State Court Trials on Appeal

Eisenberg¹,

Heise²

2015

J Empirical Legal Studies

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Prior federal and state civil appeals studies show that appeals courts overturn jury verdicts more than bench decisions and that defendants fare better than plaintiffs on appeal. Attitudinal and selection effect hypotheses may help explain an appellate court tilt that favors defendants. This study builds on and extends our prior work on state civil appeals and examines a comprehensive state court civil appeals data set to test leading theories on appellate outcomes as well as to explore the relation between plaintiff success at trial and on appeal. Using data from 40 different states and 141 counties on 8,872 completed civil trials and 646 concluded appeals, we find that appellate reversal rates for jury trials and defendant appeals exceed reversal rates for bench trials and plaintiff appeals. The reversal rate for plaintiff appeals is 21 percent, compared with 40.9 percent for defendant appeals. The reversal rate for jury trials is 33.1 percent, compared with 25 percent for bench trials. Both the attitudinal and selection effect hypotheses find some level of support in our descriptive analyses and results from more formal models. Finally, we find little correlation between how plaintiffs fare at trial and how they fare on appeal.

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“…This hypothesis has been supported by some empirical work (Clermont and Eisenberg, 2002), especially in the area of financial patent litigation (Lerner, 2010). For instance, Dunbar and Sabry (2007) examine plaintiff demographics, injury severity, and economic factors in the propensity for victims of work, car, or product-related injuries to sue.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…Alternatively, Shavell (1996) presents a brief but competing model in which he argues, under other conditions, that any frequency of plaintiff victory is possible. A find from this literature which holds particular relevance is that is that statistical models studying outcomes often suffer from omitted variable and sample selection biases when the collection of suits reaching judicial ruling (or settlement) is not representative of the larger set of cases that begin a dispute (Clermont and Eisenberg, 1998;Clermont and Eisenberg, 2002;Boyd and Hoffman, 2010).…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%