The Ohio Employer’s Law Blog has a post on a study performed on employment lawsuit outcomes in federal court from 1979 to 2006. The conclusion? No surprise — it is better for defendants in employment lawsuits to be in federal court. Apparently the plaintiff’s bar has discovered this as well, as the study shows a steep drop in federal court employment law filings — 37% from 1997 to 2006.
The New York Time reports that a soon-to-be-released study suggests that plaintiffs who settle cases before trial are better off than those that choose to go to trial. The story is here. The Ohio Employment Lawyer’s Blog has a post on the story here.
Overlawyered has an interesting but unrelated post here on the issue of cognitive bias among lawyers and judges in estimating the value of a case. No surprise, but apparently there can be a difference of opinion among lawyers as to the value of a case and the likely outcome. Perhaps that accounts for some of the poor outcomes in the study?
The American Tort Reform Association released its annual report on “Judicial Hellholes,” the worst places to be sued in the U.S. Madison County, Illinois, was pleased to be removed from the list after it implemented judicial reforms.
(Hat tip to the WSJ Law Blog, which reports it received a “rebuttal” from the American Association for Justice.)
(h/t Workplace Prof Blog)
An initial report by the Federal Judicial Center on summary judgment practice across the federal district courts suggests that between 9% - 14% of all employment discrimination cases are actually terminated on summary judgment (Table 12). The report shows that between 34% and 38% of all defendants file a motion for summary judgment in employment discrimination cases. (Table 7). In employment discrimination cases, the defendant was the moving party on summary judgment 90% of the time. (Table 1).
The statistics show, however, that defendants in employment discrimination cases are more successful than the general population when it comes to summary judgment motions. Only 3% - 4% of all cases are terminated on summary judgment. (Table 12). As noted above, 9% - 14% of all employment discrimination cases are terminated on summary judgment.
The report took the 276,120 civil cases filed in 2006 (and the 60,013 summary judgment motions) and narrowed them to 118,796 cases (and 20,697 motions) due to various reporting issues. In all, they looked at 39,120 motions for summary judgment.
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