Nicholas M. Pace

Punitive Damages in Financial Injury Jury Verdicts

Studies of civil jury verdicts have been a prominent feature of the Institute for Civil Justices research agenda since its inception. This work has included the creation of a database for the analysis of jury verdicts and descriptive and analytic studies of verdict trends. Our current research extends our jury verdict work in two significant directions: First, it provides additional detail about punitive damage awards in cases in our existing database in which the plaintiff complains of financial injuries—cases in which punitive damages are awarded relatively more frequently than in other types of cases. Second, the database has been extended to include verdicts reached in Alabama from 1992 to 1997.

Group and Aggregate Litigation in the United States

While a class action such as one brought under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 23 is certainly the most well-known mechanism for aggregating large numbers of similar claims, other approaches include mass joinder of parties, mass consolidation of separate cases, or “multidistrict litigation” transfer of federal cases from across the country into a single action for pretrial processing; corporate reorganizations under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code; large-scale inventories of clients controlled by a single attorney; government-initiated enforcement actions; and “private attorneys general” litigation brought on behalf of the general public.