Discuss the differences in judge and jury decisions in different kinds of civil trials. What are selection effects? How do judges and juries differ in the punitive damages they award in different cases?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers may vary.There are findings on how judges compare to juries in civil cases. One of the largest studies examined plaintiffs' win rates (the proportion of cases in which the verdict favored the plaintiff) in federal cases tried before either juries or judges from 1979 to 1989. For many types of cases, including contracts, property damage, civil rights, and labor disputes, plaintiffs' win rates were equivalent regardless of who decided.

But differences emerged in two types of cases-products liability and medical malpractice-where plaintiffs had more success with judges (48% win rate) than with juries (28% win rate). Researchers attributed these differences to selection effects by which the selection of cases tried by juries differed in important ways from those tried by judges. Because defense lawyers expected juries to be biased in favor of plaintiffs, they tended to settle cases in which the plaintiff had a strong case. That meant that on average, juries were left to decide relatively weaker cases for the plaintiff and appeared to make different decisions than judges. The selection effect makes it rather difficult to compare judge verdicts and jury verdicts in different cases because features of the cases themselves, rather than the decision makers, could explain any discrepancies.A related question is whether jury awards for punitive damages are different from awards assessed by judges, and whether the two groups differ on the reasons for those awards. Punitive damage awards are intended to punish and deter corporations that have engaged in serious wrongdoing. Some punitive damage awards have been very high, and the Supreme Court has ruled on several occasions about whether they were excessively high.A comprehensive study of jury/judge agreement on punitive damages, conducted by Theodore Eisenberg and his colleagues, analyzed data from more than 9,000 trials that ended in 1996 in 45 of the nation's largest trial courts. The primary finding was that judges and juries did not differ substantially in these cases. They awarded punitive damages at about the same rate (i.e., in only 4-5% of cases), although the range of the jury awards was somewhat greater than that of the judicial awards.These results call into question the notion that juries are unable to set reasonable limits on punitive damages. In fact, jurors do about as well as judges in attending to the relevant evidence in these cases and setting aside any sympathy for the plaintiff. They tend to focus on the factors that should matter to the determination of punitive damages, such as the actions of the defendant, rather than factors that should not, such as the extent of harm to the plaintiff.