The Truth About Tort Reform

Fast Facts About Litigation

Proponents of so-called "tort reform" claim that litigation and the fear of litigation hinders job growth and stifles economic development. "Frivolous lawsuits are on the rise," businesses tell Congress, making it hard to compete and difficult to succeed. But studies by the federal government and neutral academic experts prove there is no statistical basis for these claims.

Federal Litigation is Decreasing

• A 2005 report issued by the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics shows that the number of tort cases resolved in U.S. district courts fell 79 percent between 1985 and 2003.¹
• According to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, tort actions in the U.S. District Courts dropped by 28% from 2002 to 2003.²
• In addition, over the last five years federal civil filings have not only decreased 8%, but the percentage of civil filings that are personal injury cases has also declined to a mere 18.2%3

State Litigation is Decreasing

• The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), a division of the Department of Justice, performed a study of civil trials in state courts and found that the number of civil trials dropped by 47% between 1992 and 2001.4
• The number of tort cases decreased 31.8% during the same period.5
• The trend in award size was also down. The median inflation-adjusted award in all tort cases dropped 56.3% between 1992 and 2001 to $28,000.6

Lawsuit Filings are Decreasing

• Tort filings have declined 5% since 1993.7
• Contract filings, which are more likely to involve businesses than tort cases, rose by 21% over the same period.8
• Automobile tort filings, which make up the majority of all tort claims, have fallen by 5% since 1993 and by 14% since their high in 1996.9
• Medical malpractice filings per 100,000 population have fallen by 1% since 1998.10

Damage Awards are Down

• Median payout for all tort cases dropped 56 percent between 1992 and 2001. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the trend in damage size for tort cases is down. The median inflation-adjusted payout in all tort (personal injury) cases dropped 56.3% between 1992 and 2001 to $28,000.11

Asbestos Case Filings are Decreasing

• Civil filings in the U.S. District Courts decreased 3 percent in 2003 to 256,858. This overall decline in filings resulted from an 83 percent reduction in asbestos cases filed.12

Class Action Cases are Rare

• In its study of civil litigation in state courts, the BJS found only one case out of 11,908 cases that could truly be classified as a class action. That case, Bell v. Farmers Insurance Exchange, involved an insurance company’s attempt to classify claims’ representatives as administrative personnel in order to avoid paying them overtime wages.

Medical Malpractice Filings are Decreasing While Numbers of Doctors are Increasing

• The number of physicians in the United States has steadily increased from 268 per 100,000 population in 1996 to 285 per 100,000 population in 2002.13
• From 2000 through 2002, the three most recent years of data available, the rate of physicians has risen in every single state.14
• Medical malpractice filings per 100,000 population have fallen by 1% since 1998.15

Lawsuit Myths

Lawsuit Myths Put Out by the Tort Reformers

Posted on Tuesday 22 January 2008

The annual Stella Awards list, a list of the years seven “most outlandish lawsuits and verdicts in the U.S.,” is nothing more than a fraud on the public. The so-called awards deal primarily with fiction, and many of the lawsuits listed never happened. The examples of what they describe as frivolous lawsuits are at best gross misstatements. The Stella Awards are just part and parcel of the carefully planned efforts designed to destroy the civil justice system. Once these awards are announced, they take on a life of their own. That’s because of the Internet. Unfortunately, the media never bothers to investigate the validity of the cases mentioned in the awards, and then write stories that keep the myths alive.

An example of how these myths orginate is this year’s runaway First Place Stella Award winner. Mrs. Merv Grazinski, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, who supposedly purchased a new 32-foot Winnebago motor home, was the winner. On her first trip home, from a football game, having driven on to the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver’s seat to go to the back of the Winnebago to make herself a sandwich. Not surprisingly, the motor home left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Also not surprisingly, Mrs. Grazinski was supposed to have sued Winnebago for not putting in the owner’s manual that she couldn’t actually leave the driver’s seat while the cruise control was set. It was reported that an Oklahoma jury had awarded the woman $1,750,000 plus a new motor home. It was also said that Winnebago actually changed their manuals as a result of this suit, just in case Mrs. Grazinski has any relatives who might also buy a motor home. The e-mail that announced the award concludes: “Are we, as a society, getting more stupid?”

The truth is that this sort of nonsense relating to a Winnebago lawsuit never even happened. But, the media bought the story hook, line, and sinker, and never even bothered to check it out. Scores of articles – the vast majority buying the Winnebago story as gospel truth – resulted across the country. Apparently, few journalists bothered to do any research to determine whether they were true. Among outlets falling for the hoax were the New York Daily News, CNN and U.S. News & World Report. In fact, the story actually spread around the world. Readers in Canada, England, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and even Vietnam heard about this fictitious lawsuit that never happened. To his credit, Los Angeles Times reporter Myron Levin, who wanted to learn more about the lawsuit, called Winnebago and found out there was no Grazinski lawsuit. He also learned that the company had not changed the owner’s manual to avoid a swarm of copycat claims as claimed by the Stella awards.

The next time an “Internet tale” makes you believe things are even worse than you thought, check it out. Especially when the story suggests that the American court system is stacked against wealthy Corporate America. If you want to check out the “Stella Awards” and decide for yourself whether they are on the level, a good place to go is www.snopes.com, an excellent site that investigates urban myths. Simply search for “Stella Awards” and find out if the lawsuit stories are true or false.