Contrary to Popular Belief, Court Cases Are Down in OC
The number of lawsuits filed annually in Orange County has dropped 50% over the past decade or so,a statistic that runs counter to the popular idea of the state and nation as lawsuit-happy.
Members of OC’s legal community attribute the drop,which mirrors state and national figures,to several factors, including increasing legal costs for individual plaintiffs, increasing reliance on arbitration rather than trials to resolve disputes and what both plaintiff and defendant lawyers cite as a general public perception that there are too many lawsuits.
“We’re seeing anti-litigation tort reform efforts take hold,” said Mark Robinson, partner with Newport Beach-based Robinson, Calcagnie & Robinson and immediate past president of the Sacramento-based Consumer Attorneys of California. “These efforts have included a lot of public relations in the form of opinion editorial pieces in the major newspapers as well as radio talk shows that have had an impact on both white and blue-collar workers.”
The Washington-based American Tort Reform Association and organizations like the Santa Ana-based Orange County Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse have helped push the idea that the U.S. has become an excessively litigious society through publicity and lobbying campaigns.
Local members of the legal community cite other factors that have helped push down the number of litigation cases.
“There are fewer cases in part because of arbitration,that’s clearly a trend,” said Andrew Guilford, immediate past president of the State Bar of California and a partner with Costa Mesa firm Sheppard, Mullen, Richter & Hampton.
Guilford’s company handles litigation cases for corporate clients that include insurance firms.
“More contracts now have arbitration clauses so people who enter those types of contracts can’t go to court anymore,” said Guilford, adding, “Keep in mind that arbitration is still a form of litigation.”
Other OC legal professionals have been scratch ing their heads wondering why so many believe the number of lawsuits is getting out of hand, when the opposite is true.
“There is no ‘litigation explosion,'” said Judge David McEachen, supervising judge of the Civil Panel in OC’s Superior Court in Santa Ana. “In 1987, we had about 30,000 civil filings and that number has since decreased by half.”
In 2000, OC’s Superior Court received about 15,000 filings for civil claims, and that annual number has remained relatively flat since 1997.
Meanwhile, the number of litigation cases statewide has fallen from 410 per 100,000 in 1990 to 217 per 100,000 by 1997, said Robinson, citing data from the Williamsburg, Va.-based National Center for State Courts.
Rich Cohn, president of the county Trial Lawyers’ Association and a partner with Santa Ana-based Aitken, Aitken & Cohn, a plaintiff firm, said he believes the insurance sector is misleading the public into thinking that “too many” individuals are relying on lawsuits to resolve disputes,as part of an industry-wide move to dissuade people from taking their grievances to court.
“The public is still being hoodwinked by the insurance industry into believing there are too many fraudulent and unmeritorious lawsuits,” said Cohn, also president of the Orange County Trial Lawyers’ Association. “All that is being shown to not be based on reality,certainly not here in OC.”
And some attorneys on the other side agree with at least part of Cohn’s analysis.
“The ‘litigation madness’ that supposedly has taken hold of the U.S. is largely fiction,” according to Christopher Wesierski, senior partner with Irvine insurance industry defense lawyers Wesierski & Zurek.
“I think people around the world think Americans are lawsuit crazy,” said Wesierski. “I think even people in the U.S. believe it and I think that’s contributing to the drop in litigation. I think many people in OC are just tired of litigation and only want to pursue it if they really, really need to.”
Compared with the 1980s, local individuals seeking damages from corporations are less likely now to look at a lawsuit as anything more than a last resort, according to Wesierski.
“If you have a rollover vehicle accident with a significant injury where an individual becomes paraplegic, then certainly the individual will pursue the case because of the severity of the injury,” he said, “and because a settlement could be worth millions.”
OC is the fifth-largest trial court system in the country, and the legal trends here tend to mirror California and the U.S. overall. However, in at least one respect, OC is seen as outside the norm.
“OC is a conservative venue,” said Wesierski. “(Juries) are going to be more tight-fisted about giving away dollars that they don’t think are worth giving away.”
