ILR’s mission is to champion a fair legal system that promotes growth and opportunity. ILR’s research supports that mission by exploring the most challenging problems at the nexus of business and civil justice and offering solutions to those problems.
Featured Research:
Roadblock: The Trucking Litigation Problem and How to Fix It
Author: Prasad Sharma, partner, Scopelitis, Garvin, Light, Hanson & Feary, P.C.
A critical link in America’s supply chain is under attack. American trucking firms are facing rapid lawsuit inflation, with the average size of verdicts against trucking firms increasing by 867 percent between 2010 and 2018. At the same time, between 2000 and 2020, the rate of fatal crashes involving a truck decreased from 2.23 to 1.47 per hundred million large truck miles traveled. In other words, even though trucking is getting safer, verdicts are getting bigger. And that’s a problem.
Over 72 percent of everything that gets shipped in America is carried by truck, and over 90 percent of trucking firms are small businesses. That means the rising tide of lawsuits against trucking firms is raising prices on most things that Americans buy, and it’s especially damaging for small business truckers who can’t afford the increased insurance costs and risk of litigation.
ILR’s paper, which draws on original research and on statistics from the American Transportation Research Institute among other sources, describes empirically the harsh and worsening litigation landscape for trucking firms in the United States. The paper then offers federal- and state-level solutions to curb excessive litigation costs, while ensuring that injured plaintiffs have a path to just and reasonable recompense. Read More.
Tort Costs in America: An Empirical Analysis of Costs and Compensation of the U.S. Tort System
Authors: David McKnight and Paul Hinton, the Brattle Group
U.S. tort costs are steadily rising. According to ILR’s latest research, costs and compensation in the U.S. tort system amounted to $443 billion in 2020, equivalent to 2.1 percent of U.S. GDP and $3,621 per American household. These are the highest tort cost levels since at least 2016, the earliest year for which we have data. Read more.
Nuclear Verdicts: Trends, Causes, and Solutions
Authors: Cary Silverman and Christopher E. Appel, Shook, Hardy & Bacon L.L.P.
Nuclear verdicts are on the rise, with damaging consequences for businesses, consumers, and the rule of law. Nuclear Verdicts: Trends, Causes, and Solutions examines 1,376 nuclear verdicts (jury verdicts worth $10 million or more) in state and federal courts from 2010–2019. The report shows that these verdicts grew significantly in frequency and size in the 2010–2019 study period, with the median verdict rising from $19.3 million in 2010 to $24.6 million in 2019. That’s a 27.5% increase, far outstripping inflation of 17.2% over the same period. Read more.
Interested in more of our research? You can find all of ILR’s reports here.
Questions on ILR’s research program? Email Oriana Senatore.
Questions on ILR’s membership program? Email Michelle Timberlake.