Courts See Decrease in Tort Filings

An analysis of state court data by the Wall Street Journal challenges the notion that Americans are overly litigious and raises questions about prohibitive litigation costs. According to the WSJ, tort lawsuit filings declined more than 80% from 1993 to 2015. One of the main factors cited for the decline in tort filings is the high cost of bringing suits. Data from the National Center for State Courts shows that the median cost of civil cases is $43,000 – $122,000. 

In “We Won’t See You in Court,” the Wall Street Journal describes a “nationwide ebb in lawsuits” that contradicts the perception of Americans flooding the courts with claims. WSJ’s analysis of data from the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) found that tort cases declined from 16% of state court civil filings in 1993 to about 4% of filings in 2015—a difference of more than 1.7 million cases.

But there was one notable exception to this downward trend. From 1993 to 2015 contract cases—which includes debt collection, foreclosure, landlord-tenant disputes, employment contracts, contracts for goods and services, and real estate transactions—increased from 18% of the civil docket to 51%

You can read more about this here. https://www.wsj.com/articles/we-wont-see-you-in-court-the-era-of-tort-lawsuits-is-waning-1500930572