Appeal from Jury or Judge Trial: Defendants' Advantage
28 Pages Posted: 9 Feb 2000
There are 2 versions of this paper
Appeal from Jury or Judge Trial: Defendants' Advantage
Appeal from Jury or Judge Trial: Defendants' Advantage
Date Written: December 9, 1999
Abstract
The prevailing "expert" opinion is that jury verdicts are largely immune to appellate revision. Using a database that includes all federal civil trials and appeals since 1988, we find that civil jury trials as a group are not so special on appeal. But the data do show that defendants succeed more than plaintiffs on appeal from civil trials, and especially from jury trials. Defendants appealing their losses after trial by jury obtain reversals at a 31% rate, while losing plaintiffs succeed in only 13% of their appeals from jury trials. Both descriptive analyses of the results and more formal regression models support an explanation based on appellate judges' attitudes toward trial-level adjudicators. The appellate court is more favorable to the defendant than is the trial judge and especially the jury. The large difference between appellate court and trial jury stems from the appellate judges' sizable misperceptions about the jury.
JEL Classification: K41, K13, K10
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
How Employment Discrimination Plaintiffs Fare in Federal Court
-
By Michael Heise, Theodore Eisenberg, ...
-
Plaintiphobia in State Courts? An Empirical Study of State Court Trials on Appeal
By Theodore Eisenberg and Michael Heise
-
Plaintiphobia in State Courts Redux? An Empirical Study of State Court Trials on Appeal
By Theodore Eisenberg and Michael Heise
-
Plaintiphobia in the Appellate Courts: Civil Rights Really Do Differ from Negotiable Instruments?
-
The Rule of Law and the Litigation Process: the Paradox of Losing by Winning
-
Employment Discrimination Plaintiffs in Federal Court: From Bad to Worse?