Litigation

"Yes, Virginia, There Is A Litigation Explosion."

By Ted Frank

For years, I've wanted to write a piece rebutting the claims of the litigation lobby and academics who dispute the existence of the litigation explosion by relying on the misleading statistic that the number of cases have gone down. Lester Brickman has preempted me by noting the "large scale undercounting" that fails to account for mass torts and class actions consolidating thousands or millions of claims in a single lawsuit. For example, even as the number of tort lawsuits against New York declined between 1995 and 2004, the city doubled the amount it paid in settlements and judgments, and no doubt increased its litigation expenses as well.

Full post as published by Point of Law on October 11, 2010 (boomark / email).