Two Class Actions Skew Statistics Showing Big Uptick in Civil Trials

Trials & Litigation

Two Class Actions Skew Statistics Showing Big Uptick in Civil Trials

Posted Sep 2, 2008, 06:17 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss

A report showing a big increase in federal civil trials for fiscal year 2007 is skewed by the statistics from just one district.

The report said almost 10,000 cases went to trial last year, up from between 3,500 and 4,000 a year since 2004, the American Lawyer reports. But the publication did some digging and found that a majority of the 2007 cases—6,358 of them—were from the middle district of Louisiana.

Court clerk Nick Lorio told the publication that two class-action cases revolving around oil refinery explosions were tried in 2007, but the cases were counted as around 6,000 trials because that is the number of plaintiffs.

The Louisiana cases, the story says, were “skewing the entire report and making it seem as if the vanishing civil trial had returned. Take those cases away, and the number of trials stayed at about the same miserably low level it has hovered at for years—about 1.5 percent of all dispositions.”

A press release did not mention the district-by-district breakdown. Law professor Marc Galanter thought court officials may have had a reason to muddy the stastics. "They are a little embarrassed by the lack of trials," he told the publication. "So they try and present the numbers in a way that shows a major increase."

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