Personal Injury Law

By the numbers: Facts about personal injury lawsuits

By Ryan Bradley, Esq.

The Center for Justice and Democracy recently published an article with some statistics about personal injury lawsuits that might surprise people who do not work in a profession related to civil litigation. For all the stories of frivolous lawsuits or how litigious our society has supposedly become, the numbers show that it is not quite the epidemic that some would have you believe. Tort reform advocates especially like to claim that the number of civil lawsuits is getting out of hand, but the numbers show that this is not the case. In fact, in most areas of personal injury law, the numbers are on the decline.

Here are just of few of the statistics pointed out in the article:

- Only one out of every ten people that suffer a serious personal injury ever file a claim for compensation and only two percent turn into lawsuits.

- It the area of medical malpractice, only twelve percent of people that suffer a medical malpractice injury ever file a claim and only six percent receive compensation.

- 44,000 to 98,000 people die every year due to medical malpractice or medical errors in hospitals.

- Studies by academic groups including the Harvard School of Public Health show that the idea of rampant frivolous lawsuits is an exaggeration.

- There has been a decrease in tort filings since the early nineties.

- Tort cases make up only five percent of the total number of civil cases. In contrast, contract dispute cases make up over 27 percent.

- The number of personal injury cases (which include car accident cases, product liability, medical malpractice and wrongful death) that go to a jury trial is less than four percent.

Full post as published by Missouri Accident Lawyer Blog on July 25, 2009 (boomark / email).