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The Media

By Linda S. Crawford
November 27, 2013

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 Debased 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, Examining the Work of State Courts, 2002: A National Perspective from the Court Statistics Project 30 (Ostrom, Brian et al., eds., 2002).

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