Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1991
Keywords
Pretrial motion success, Trial success, Plaintiff success in litigation, Plaintiff success at pretrial motion, Plaintiff success at trial stages, Empirical legal studies
Disciplines
Applied Statistics | Civil Procedure | Litigation
Abstract
Legal cases that reach trial are a biased subset of underlying disputes. This makes it difficult to study the legal system by observing tried cases. This paper examines the relationship between plaintiff success at pretrial motion and trial stages across many categories of cases. The large, significant positive relationship between plaintiff success rates at these two procedural stages suggests that characteristics of case categories influence outcomes at both stages. Observers of a category of tried cases or cases resolved by motion can make informed judgments about how that category of cases fares at the other procedural stage.
Recommended Citation
Eisenberg, Theodore, "The Relationship between Plaintiff Sucess Rates before Trial and at Trial" (1991). Cornell Law Faculty Publications. 410.
https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/facpub/410
Publication Citation
Published in: Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, vol. 154, no. 1 (1991).