Greedy Trial Lawyer
Texas Judges See No Need For Tort Reform
Category: Seeing Clearly Now
Judges have a front row seat in the civil justice system. They also are presumed to be impartial as between the plaintiff and defense bar. Their observations about the fairness of the jury system and the need for more tort reform might be worth knowing.
Tort Reform: Straight From the Horse's (or the Judge's) Mouth
For years, Texas residents have been hearing about runaway juries, frivolous lawsuits, and the need for tort reform. But most of the stories in the popular press and thrown around by tort reform groups are anecdotal; there has always been a question of how to best gather data to measure whether jury awards are excessive or suits are frivolous....for the last two years, the professors have conducted a survey of Texas District Court Judges to get their views on the "litigation crises." After receiving responses from an astounding 78% of Texas district court judges, the results of the survey were released in the Baylor Law Review in an article titled Straight From the Horse's Mouth: Judicial Observations of Jury Behavior and the Need For Tort Reform.
Because the article is not yet publicly available, we don't want to provide too many details. But we will say that among the results were findings that substantially more judges thought juries had awarded too low of damages than judges that thought juries had awarded too much. And well over 80% of the judges did not think there needed to be additional "reform" to address frivolous lawsuits.
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