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The Media
There is a perception, in large part driven by media bias, that in America today, unlike in times past, “everyone sues.” This could not be farther from the truth. In fact, there were more lawsuits per capita in the United States in 1900 than there have been in recent years. Galanter, Marc: Real World Torts: An Antidote to Anecdote; 55 MD. L. Rev. 1093, 1103 (1996). U.S. court filings currently are in the same range, when adjusted for population, as those in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, England and Denmark. Kritzer, Herbert: Lawyer Fees and Lawyer Behavior in Litigation: What Does the Empirical Literature Really Say?; 80 Tex. L. Rev. 1943, 1981-1982 (2002). Indeed, despite the public's belief in our nation's litigious behavior, the number of lawyers in England, Canada and Germany increased at comparable or higher rates to U.S. lawyers during the last generation. Galanter, Marc: News from Nowhere: The based Debate on Civil Justice; 71 Denv. U. L. Rev., 77, 80 (2002).
Despite what the media would have us believe, tort filings are not what has caused an increase in overall court filings. In fact it is domestic cases ' divorce and post-divorce proceedings ' that have dramatically increased the number of overall court filings. Saks, Michael: Do We Really Know Anything About the Behavior of the Tort Litigation System ' and Why Not?; 140 U. Pa. L. Rev., 1147, 1149, 1154, 1156 (1992). And a study by the National Center for State Courts looked at general jurisdiction courts of 17 states in the period from 1987-2001 and found that contract cases equaled or exceeded tort filings in all but four of the years. National Center for State Courts, Examing the Work of State Courts, 2002: A National Perspective from the Court Statistics Project 30 (Ostrom, Brian et al., eds., 2002).
Between 1992 and 2001 tort filings ebbed, with states seeing a median decline of 19% fewer tort filings. And for all the play medical malpractice lawsuits get in the press, they only comprised a mere 5% of total tort filings. Id at 12. During the 1990s, medical malpractice court filings fell by 1%, adjusted for changes in the population. Koenig, Thomas et al.: In Defense of Tort Law; 66-67 (2001). In sum, although the' public's perception is to the contrary, the data shows that, across the board, litigation rates have been on the wane for years, especially on the tort side. Nockleby, John: How to Manufacture a Crisis: Evaluating Empirical Claims Behind 'Tort Reform'; 86 Or. L. Rev. 533 (2007).
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