FLORIDA PLAINTIFF

A recent report released by the Florida Bar found that an astounding .3 of 1% of civil cases are resolved by actually going to trial.  This means that if you have a civil lawsuit then your case has a 99.7% chance of resolving short of trial.  This report found this percentage an all time low and noted that this decrease as mostly related to alternative dispute resolution (“ADR”) processes like mediation and arbitration.  ADR is now ordered in most civil cases and many judges require litigants to go through some form of ADR prior to going to trial.  

Perhaps the most intriguing part of this report was the section revealing that americans participation in jury trials actually has a direct relationship to the amount of confidence the public has in our system of justice.  Fewer jurors means less public participation in our justice system which in turn erodes public trust in our system.

This is problematic for a number of reasons.  First, for our system to work the public must have full confidence that justice is done in a large majority of instances.  Second, the less confidence the public has in our system the more venerable we are to those who would like to see the system set aside as a whole.  Insurance and some corporate interests have spent millions spreading propaganda that our justice system is broken.  These interests would love nothing more than to eliminate the potential that citizens like us would be able to hold them accountable for anything.  

For purposes of selecting a lawyer this report is important since it reveals how few jury trials are actually conducted.  The import of fewer trials obviously means that fewer lawyers are trying cases.  Insurance companies value cases, in part, based upon the risk associated with having to try the case.  If the lawyer in your case is one the insurance company knows will and has tried cases with success then the company will pay attention to that detail and will likely increase the value of the case.

If you called to jury duty please serve remembering that, next to serving our country in the military, it is the only duty our constitution asks of us.