Frivolous lawsuits. Runaway juries. Greedy trial lawyers. Are these really typical features of our Texas courts?
Texas' civil justice system became a political football during the 1990s, a centerpiece of political consultants and candidates who marketed "tort reform" to a willing public. Campaign talking points became widely accepted as facts.
As a result, it has become conventional wisdom that Texas' civil justice system is broken.
A group of law professors now offers a corrective to that misleading mythology. Baylor Law Review has just published a remarkable new survey of trial judges across the state called "Straight from the Horse's Mouth: Judicial Observations of Jury Behavior and the Need for Tort Reform."
Instead of compiling anecdotal evidence or polling former jurors, the study's authors canvassed the trial court judges themselves. It is the trial judges — and not jurors, the parties or their lawyers — who have the closest, best-informed view of jury verdicts over a substantial period of time. The study should be an important tool in helping Texas citizens fairly assess the true condition of our judicial system.
The survey reveals that most Texas trial judges do not see significant numbers of frivolous filings and that plaintiffs with legitimate suits are much more likely to be undercompensated than to receive any windfall. Among its key findings:
More than 83 percent of the Texas district court judges had never observed a single instance of a "runaway" jury verdict on either actual or exemplary damages during the preceding four years.
More than 85 percent of judges had not, or had in only one instance, granted relief during the past four years due to an excessive award of actual damages. No judge in the entire sampling had granted such relief during the prior four years in more than three cases.
More than 83 percent of Texas judges had not witnessed a single jury award compensatory damages that were too high.
15 percent of Texas trial judges observed that juries do not award punitive damages even when those judges believed such an award was warranted.
44 percent of the judges had not personally observed a single frivolous lawsuit in their courtroom during the prior four years.
99 percent had observed no more than between 1 percent to 25 percent (the lowest percentage category available) of the cases filed before them as being frivolous.
85 percent of the responding judges had not punished a lawyer for violating the courts' rules more than one time during the previous four years.
More than 86 percent of the responding judges believed there is no need for further legislation addressing frivolous lawsuits.
The survey was not commissioned or coordinated by any advocacy group. Instead, it was financed by a broad range of law firms, from corporate (Baker Botts; Fulbright & Jaworski) to defense (Beirne, Maynard & Parsons; Hartline Dacus) to appellate (Moore & Kelly; Cook & Roach) to plaintiff (Williams Kherker; Harrison Davis Steakley).
The study's methodology has also ensured its reliability. Baylor Dean Bradley Toben and four other faculty members distributed the survey to the 389 Texas district court judges and received responses from 303, or 78 percent, of them — an unusually high yield for any type of survey.
While it remains to be seen whether Texas citizens will be treated to billboards and television ads touting the survey's findings, the survey is an important step in clearing the air about the court system.
Most of the political myths that gave birth to the conventional wisdom about runaway juries have now been exposed as urban legends, and the Baylor survey of anonymous judges from around the state disputes what openly partisan politicians have said in every political campaign for the past 20 years. When it comes to jury trials, Texans should ignore the politicians and consultants and heed the data.