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

Plaintiphobia in State Courts ? An Empirical Study of State Court Trials on Appeal. Theodore Eisenberg and Michael Heise Journal of Legal Studies 報告人:高培儒. 20090902. 1. Introdutions. Past Result from federal civil appeals :

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

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  1. Plaintiphobia in State Courts?An Empirical Study of State Court Trials on Appeal Theodore Eisenberg and Michael Heise Journal of Legal Studies 報告人:高培儒 20090902

  2. 1. Introdutions • Past Result from federal civil appeals: • Appeals court are more likely to disrupt jury verdicts than bench decisions • Trial court defendants fare better than plaintiffs on appeal • Hypotheses • Attitudinal effect • Selection effect

  3. 1. Introdutions • Using data from 46 countries • They find that state court appellate reversal rates for • jury verdict (33.7%) , bench trial (27.5%) • appealed by plaintiffs (21.5%), appealed by defendants (41.5%) • Consistent with federal cases • And this support more on attitudinal effect

  4. 2.1 Differential Attitude Hypothesis • This theory emphasizes the possibility that • Either trial courts exhibit a pro-plaintiff bias • Or appeal courts perceive (or mis-perceive) trial courts as being pro-plaintiff • Because natural empathy with a victim, trial court bias favoring plaintiffs may exist • Even if the bias does not exist, appellate courts may assume such a bias exists and act accordingly

  5. 2.2 Selection effect Hypothesis • Posit that plaintiffs and defendants systematically appeal cases of different quality • different stakes, settlement incentives, and others • Theory implies that • the side with more at stake should be willing to settle their weakest cases • This increase their win rate

  6. 2.2 Selection effect Hypothesis • The plaintiff win rate at trial was 55.4% (US Department of Justice 2004) • It might evidence plaintiffs’ higher stakes • Just as trial court, the plaintiffs should equally careful about only pushing stronger cases on appeal • If so, appeal reversal rates for plaintiffs would approximate the defendants’ reversal rate, if not exceed it • But this isn’t consistent with data

  7. 2.2 Selection effect Hypothesis • Posner (1985) • Losing defendants might access settlement decision through a cost-benefit lens • Losing plaintiffs might place more weight on the desire to ‘’be heard fully’’ on appeal • If so, one would expect an appellate rate to favor defendants.

  8. 3. Data, Methodology, and Research Design • Data sets: • Civil justice survey of state courts, a project of the NCSC and the BJS • gathers data from state court clerks’ offices on tort, contract, and property cases disposed by trial during 2001 • The 2001 data set covers state courts in a random sample of 46 of the nation’s 75 most populous countries • Include information on 8038 trial

  9. 3. Data, Methodology, and Research Design • Data sets: • A followed-up study implemented by NCSC and BJS • which supplemented the 2001 trial study by tracking the 1204 appealed case • 47 (3.9%)case were exclude, because the appeals lacked critical information about which party prevail at trial • Exclude cases where it was not clear that the nature of the appeal was adverse • Finally, they use 965 usable appealed cases

  10. Table 1 • In 8038 completed state court trails • only 12% (965) continued to appeal process • just over one-half (549) completed at least the first level of it, disposition by an intermediate appellate court • The federal data cover the period 1988 through 1997

  11. 4.1 The Vanishing Appeal • Their state appeals rate seems being much smaller both in comparative and absolute terms • However, there are structural differences between federal and state appeals • The types of claim • Ex, to access the federal court system • litigants must either raise a federal question • or plead for damages that exceed $75,000 and establish diversity between parties

  12. 4.1 The Vanishing Appeal • These routes naturally higher stakes cases into federal courts and away from state courts • Therefore, if federal trials typically involve higher stake claims than those in states trials • We should expect the federal appeals rate exceed the state appeals rate

  13. 4.1 The Vanishing Appeal • In alternative, their finding of lower state appeals rate might be due to the different time periods of the two studies and capture a downturn in appeals activity • The influence of motor vehicle cases on state courts also contributes • Such cases account for a much smaller fraction of federal trials • However, it has the lowest appeal rate (4.0%) • The overall state appeals rate increase to 16.3% if we disregards state motor vehicle cases

  14. 4.1 The Vanishing Appeal • Besides • Defendants who lost at trial were more likely than plaintiffs to initiate an appeal • State litigants were more likely to appeal bench than jury trail decision • These comport with federal data

  15. 4.2 Appeal Drop-Out • Insert Table 2

  16. 4.3 Appeal Outcomes • Appeals courts were far more likely to affirm than reverse a trial court decision

  17. 5.1 Modeling the Decision to Appeal and the Appeal Outcome • With respect to the decision to appeal, parties’ perceptions(correct or not) about • how appellate courts react to jury trials compared to bench trials, • and to plaintiff trial court wins compared to defendant wins, likely inform litigants • They include these dummy variables

  18. 5.1 Modeling the Decision to Appeal and the Appeal Outcome • They also expect that a state and particular case type’s ‘’reversal culture’’ influences a decision to pursue an appeal • Case types also exercise important influence over other factors • Ex, case type influence the routing of cases to trial

  19. 5.1 Modeling the Decision to Appeal and the Appeal Outcome • Individual, corporation, and governments vary in their appetite for and behavior in litigation • Moreover, because litigants’ decisions about whether to appeal may vary over time, • they include the year the lawsuit was initially filed • To account for state-level effects, they include multi-countries dummy for those states with more than one sampled country

  20. 5.1 Modeling the Decision to Appeal and the Appeal Outcome • Efforts to model the outcome of an appeal call for a similar, though slightly different, set of independent variables • These involves trial type (judge, jury, defendant win or plaintiff win) • other:case types, party types, and year appeal filed etc

  21. 5.2 Results

  22. 5.2 Results

  23. 5.3 Discussion • The regression models support the earlier descriptive findings and are consistent with an appellate court tilt favoring defendants, especially lost a jury trial • And selection effects are unlikely to completely explain the appellate outcome

  24. 5.4 Implication for Attitudinal Hypothesis • Do their findings imply juries exert a pro-plaintiff bias? • This scenario is unlikely • Kalven and Zeisel 1996;Eisenberg et al. 2005, 2006: • Judges and juries act in comparable ways when confronted with comparable case • These may imply that the appeal courts mis-perceive juries as being pro-plaintiff

  25. 5.5.1 Little Evidence of a Selection Effect Explanation • Just as plaintiffs’ higher stakes in cases should boost their trial win rates, • the selection hypothesis also predicts that the side with lower stakes (defendants) would appeal more • But this deference is not statistical significance

  26. 5.5.1 Little Evidence of a Selection Effect Explanation • More important, just as trial court, • the plaintiffs should equally careful about only pushing stronger cases on appeal • However, this is not the case as defendants enjoyed a far higher appeals reversal rate than plaintiffs

  27. 5.5.2 Evidence of an Unexpected Selection Effect • While selection theory may not explain asymmetric appellate outcomes within the state context • According to Clermont and Eisenberg (2001) • Selection theory may help explain differences between state and federal appellate settings

  28. 6. Conclusion • Appeals court are more likely to disrupt jury verdicts than bench decisions • Trial court defendants fare better than plaintiffs on appeal • And these are contributed by differential attitude of appellate courts

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