The Fake Crisis over Lawsuits

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The Fake Crisis over Lawsuits:
Who's Paying to Keep the Myths Alive?
Stephanie Mencimer

Over the past two years, the average media consumer would be under the impression that the nation is awash with lawsuits, greedy trial lawyers and out of control juries eager to punish corporate America with million-dollar verdicts. The airwaves and newspapers have been flooded with hundreds of stories on the legal system, with common references to the justice system as a lottery for the undeserving and most lawsuits as "frivolous." And many of the stories carry glaring factual errors. A few examples:

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Academic researchers have done a tremendous amount of empirical study that contradicts many of the claims of a "lawsuit crisis," but none of it made it into the stories cited above. For instance, despite the alarmist headlines, tort lawsuit filings nationally actually have decreased 9 percent since 1992, according to the National Center for State Courts. The numbers are even more pronounced when stacked up against population growth. In Texas, where the population jumped 23 percent between 1990 and 2000, the rate of tort filings fell from 233 to 164 per 100,000 residents, a 30 percent decline. In California, the rate of filings plummeted 45 percent. As for the "legal lottery" described in Newsweek, a Bureau of Justice Statistics report found that in 1996, the "jackpot" really isn't very large. The median punitive damage award was only $27,000.

Based on this article, many of the claims that the US is more litigious than before are unwarranted.

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