Trial Trends

Before we present this year's honor roll of the top verdicts, we'd like to congratulate the attorneys and firms that earned a place on the winning side of the list. It is our pleasure to celebrate these truly notable cases. But while we're proud to present what we believe is the most comprehensive list of last year's top verdicts, we're equally proud of the other 137,000 cases that populate the VerdictSearch database. Our electronic repository includes a vast sampling of plaintiff's verdicts large and small, defense verdicts, bench decisions, settlements, mediations and arbitrations. Indeed, for every case that is memorialized in this book, there are countless $5,000 verdicts or defense wins in injury-threshold cases. Each case is equally important to the attorneys who've discovered the value of searching our database. Why? Read on..

You're 24 hours away from a settlement conference for a case in which your plaintiff is suffering complex regional pain syndrome, a burning neurological condition also known as reflex sympathetic dystrophy. Most personal-injury lawyers are familiar with this condition, but not so familiar as to have a strong idea as to how much a jury would award to such a plaintiff. What is a fair settlement amount? A simple search of the VerdictSearch database would provide 49 such instances of that injury from cases disposed in 2008 alone. Do the math, and you'll find that cases involving that injury produce an average jury verdict of $8,174,911. Of course, you'd have to view the cases in your jurisdiction and weed out those that include other more significant injuries, but the point should be clear: Our database can quickly and precisely provide the information you need to win or settle your case. But this is just one example of the type of information that we can provide. For example, the wrongful-death chart on the facing page shows that 73 percent of plaintiffs' verdicts total $1 million or more, but, on the other hand, the motor-vehicle study shows that 46 percent of those cases' plaintiffs' verdicts result in recoveries of less than $25,000. And let's not forget the defense judgments. While the medical-malpractice pie chart shows that 22 percent of plaintiffs' verdicts top the $5 million mark, our database will also reveal that about 71 percent of all 2008 med-mal cases resulted in a settlement or no award for the plaintiff.

Take a few moments to digest the trends revealed by these charts, then consider how this or similar information can help you prevail in your next case.
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Last year, premises-liability cases produced a mean award of $1,665,217, which represents an 11.2-percent increase over the prior four years' mean of $1,497,871.25. The relative consistency in these awards' year-to-year averages is repeated in the distribution of award amounts, as demonstrated by the pie chart, which shows that a premises-liability case is just as likely to produce an award between $50,000 and $99,999 as an award of $2.5 million or more. Of course, the consistent distribution is largely a product of the wide variety of injuries that are possible in these types of cases.

Last year, mean and median awards jumped significantly in cases involving motor-vehicle accidents. The mean award of $965,281 represented a 23.2-percent increase over 2007, and the median award of $41,621 registered a whopping 49.3-percent jump over 2007 - and the highest median figure since 2003's $45,000 (not reflected on the accompanying chart). However, stratification has barely changed. During the five-year periods ending in 2005, 2006 and 2007, roughly 44 percent of the awards were less than $25,000. That figure inched upward to 46 percent last year.

After a three-year decline, wrongful-death awards rebounded last year, soaring to a four-year high mean of $13,101,279. However, as is sometimes the case, that average may have been bloated by a handful of huge verdicts, given that the median verdict of $2,590,871 fell within a footstep of the $2,225,911 median for the years spanning 2003 and 2007. Indeed, this year's Top 100 verdicts include wrongful-death judgments of $590 million and $252 million. The pie chart reflects that some 41 percent of these verdicts land between $1 million and $5 million.

After a spike in 2005, the mean medical-malpractice award has remained fairly constant, settling in at $5,051,428 in 2008. Although the median award registered a 24.6-percent year-on-year jump last year, that metric has also remained largely flat through the most recent five-year sample. And, as has been the case through the past few years, about 50 percent of med-mal awards fall within the range of $250,000 and $2.5 million.

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