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Plaintiphobia in State Courts? An Empirical Study of State Court Trials on Appeal

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  • Theodore Eisenberg
  • Michael Heise

Abstract

Prior federal civil appellate studies show that appeals courts overturn jury verdicts more than bench decisions and that defendants fare better than plaintiffs on appeal. Attitudinal and selection effect hypotheses may explain the appellate court tilt favoring defendants. This study presents the first statistical models of the appeals process for a comprehensive set of state court civil trials to test theories on appellate outcomes. Using data from 46 large counties on 8,038 trials and 549 concluded appeals, we find that appellate reversal rates for jury trials and defendant appeals exceed reversal rates for bench trials and plaintiff appeals. The reversal rate for plaintiff appeals is 21.5 percent, compared with 41.5 percent for defendant appeals. The reversal rate for jury trials is 33.7 percent, compared with 27.5 percent for bench trials. Descriptive analyses and more formal models suggest that appellate judges' attitudes toward trial-level adjudicators help explain these asymmetric outcomes. (c) 2009 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

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  • Theodore Eisenberg & Michael Heise, 2009. "Plaintiphobia in State Courts? An Empirical Study of State Court Trials on Appeal," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 38(1), pages 121-155, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlstud:v:38:y:2009:i:1:p:121-155
    DOI: 10.1086/529150
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Pierre Bentata & Romain Espinosa & Yolande Hiriart, 2019. "Correction Activities by France’s Supreme Courts and Control over their Dockets," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 129(2), pages 169-204.
    2. Steven Shavell, 2010. "On the Design of the Appeals Process: The Optimal Use of Discretionary Review versus Direct Appeal," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 39(1), pages 63-108, January.
    3. Pierre Bentata & Yolande Hiriart, 2015. "Biased Judges: Evidence from French Environmental Cases," Working Papers 2015-17, CRESE.
    4. Keith N. Hylton & Haizhen Lin, 2009. "Trial Selection Theory: A Unified Model," Working Papers 2009-06, Indiana University, Kelley School of Business, Department of Business Economics and Public Policy.
    5. Miguel Santolino & Magnus Söderberg, 2011. "The influence of decision-maker effort and case complexity on appealed rulings subject to multi-categorical selection," IREA Working Papers 201115, University of Barcelona, Research Institute of Applied Economics, revised Sep 2011.
    6. Bharat Bhole & Bríd Gleeson Hanna, 2009. "An analytical framework for interpreting appellate court data," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 29(2), pages 1163-1174.
    7. David Gliksberg, 2014. "Does the Law Matter? Win Rates and Law Reforms," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 11(2), pages 378-407, June.

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