IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/empleg/v12y2015i1p100-127.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • Theodore Eisenberg
  • Michael Heise

Abstract

Prior federal and state civil appeals 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 help explain an appellate court tilt that favors defendants. This study builds on and extends our prior work on state civil appeals and examines a comprehensive state court civil appeals data set to test leading theories on appellate outcomes as well as to explore the relation between plaintiff success at trial and on appeal. Using data from 40 different states and 141 counties on 8,872 completed civil trials and 646 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 percent, compared with 40.9 percent for defendant appeals. The reversal rate for jury trials is 33.1 percent, compared with 25 percent for bench trials. Both the attitudinal and selection effect hypotheses find some level of support in our descriptive analyses and results from more formal models. Finally, we find little correlation between how plaintiffs fare at trial and how they fare on appeal.

Suggested Citation

  • Theodore Eisenberg & Michael Heise, 2015. "Plaintiphobia in State Courts Redux? An Empirical Study of State Court Trials on Appeal," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 12(1), pages 100-127, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:empleg:v:12:y:2015:i:1:p:100-127
    DOI: 10.1111/jels.12066
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/jels.12066
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/jels.12066?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michael Hellwig & Kai Hüschelrath & Ulrich Laitenberger, 2018. "Settlements and Appeals in the European Commission’s Cartel Cases: An Empirical Assessment," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 52(1), pages 55-84, February.
    2. At Christian & Friehe Tim & Gabuthy Yannick, 2019. "On Lawyer Compensation When Appeals Are Possible," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 19(2), pages 1-11, April.
    3. Kai Hüschelrath & Florian Smuda, 2016. "The Appeals Process in the European Commission's Cartel Cases: An Empirical Assessment," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 13(2), pages 330-357, June.
    4. Chang, Yun-chien & Chen, Kong-Pin & Liao, Jen-Che & Lin, Chang-Ching, 2023. "Ask more, awarded more: Evidence from Taiwan’s courts," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    5. Adam M. Samaha & Michael Heise & Gregory C. Sisk, 2020. "Inputs and Outputs on Appeal: An Empirical Study of Briefs, Big Law, and Case Complexity," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 17(3), pages 519-555, September.
    6. Brent D. Boyea & Paul Brace, 2021. "Revisiting the Business of State Supreme Courts in the 21st Century," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 18(3), pages 684-696, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:empleg:v:12:y:2015:i:1:p:100-127. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1740-1461 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.