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TO WEB VERSION
SUMMER/FALL
2003
Seeking
Jackpot Judgements
— Kathleen
Cason
Each side trots out the horror stories: Doctors and insurers
blame frivolous lawsuits and runaway juries for sky-high malpractice
costs; trial lawyers and consumer advocates point fingers at incompetent
doctors or negligent corporations for the suffering of innocent victims.
Some argue that Wall Street drives costs, not the courtroom.
But ultimately, legislators make the rules. And at both the state and
federal levels, lawmakers are considering changes to tort law, or laws
that apply to civil suits that seek damages for personal injury.
“The whole tort business is heating up again in the Congress and
in the Georgia legislature,” said Susette Talarico, the Albert
Berry Saye Professor of American Government and Constitutional Law at
the University
of Georgia. “The problem with tort reform is that few critics — or
even defenders — of current law have any research to support their
positions.”
So Talarico and Thomas Eaton, J. Alton Hosch Professor of Law, amassed
the most comprehensive set of state civil court cases in the nation — more
than 25,000 tort cases from nine courts in six Georgia counties (Research
Reporter Summer 2000).
They analyzed these cases to answer key questions about tort litigation
in Georgia and to give policymakers “more of a factual basis on
which to make judgments about our civil justice system,” Eaton
said.
“The media only give attention to the spectacular cases, the atypical
cases. And these become the basis for most people’s generalizations
about the tort system,” Talarico said.
Contrary to popularly held views, the researchers found that tort cases
represent less than 10 percent of all civil litigation, most involve
simple disputes, few go to trial and the rate of filings is not increasing.
When a case goes to trial, plaintiffs and defendants have an equal chance
of success. When plaintiffs win, awards are modest — a median of
$6,000 — and punitive damages rare.
In a new study, Eaton and Talarico teamed up with UGA economist David
Mustard to explore what happens when plaintiffs ask for punitive damages.
“Critics of punitive damages say the problem is not simply the
amount and number of awards, it’s the effect that it has on settlements — the ‘below
the water’ portion of the iceberg,” Eaton said. “We
wanted to see if there is some measurable impact of the request for punitive
damages on how a case is processed.”
Of the 25,000 tort cases they studied, only 3,700 cases sought punitive
damages and merely 15 cases were granted awards.
The researchers found that including a request for damages didn’t
affect how a case was processed, Eaton said. Not surprisingly, cases
asking for punitive damages were more likely to receive them. An unexpected
finding was that these cases requesting awards were more likely to be
tried by judge than jury, he said.
“In spite of the conventional wisdom to the contrary, plaintiffs
prevail more often in cases tried before a judge instead of a jury,” Eaton
said.
The researchers also compared how claims were processed for cases where
punitive damages were capped by law versus those that weren’t capped.
Georgia law caps punitive damages at $250,000 for most cases.
When uncapped punitive damages were involved, the case was more likely
to end up in court.
“This suggests that instead of being a kind of extortion to settle,
seeking punitive damages was an impediment to settle,” Eaton said. “The
uncertainty about whether punitive damages would be awarded and if so,
for how much, appears to get in the way of the two sides putting a value
on their case in the same range that would lead to a settlement. Again
that is contrary to at least one strain of the criticism.”
Eaton said their research shows little sign that punitive damages in
Georgia create problems — whether in terms of the number of cases
in which punitive damages are awarded, the amount awarded for punitive
damages or the impact that seeking punitive damages has on processing
cases.
“It’s not that we’re opposed to any or all tort reform,” Talarico
said. “Just base it on facts instead of assumptions.”
For
more information, contact Susette Talarico at
talarico@arches.uga.edu or Thomas Eaton at teaton@arches.uga.edu
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