Trial Trends

History was made on Dec. 20 of last year, when a Texas jury awarded $150.37 billion to the family of a boy who sustained fatal burns after being doused with gasoline and set afire. The judgment, assessed against a now-incarcerated individual alleged to have committed the crime, will never be fully recovered, but the jury verdict in Middleton v. Collins was nevertheless the largest in U.S. history.

VerdictSearch's annual Top 100 salutes Middleton and 99 other big-ticket verdicts. Verdicts of such magnitude speak to the ability of the attorneys involved. The many hours spent crafting opening and closing statements, preparing for cross-examination, and creating demonstrative evidence all pay off when a jury decides in your favor. Surely, preparation is the key to the cases you're about to read.

But before we move on to the parade of top verdicts, let's revisit preparation. Imagine that you're merely days away from a trial in which your client, a woman battling a recurrence of breast cancer, is claiming that the disease could have been eradicated if it had been timely diagnosed upon its first occurrence. Her doctor performed two mammographies in two years and concluded that the mass was a benign cyst. Not secure in the doctor's opinion, your client saw another doctor, who performed a biopsy and diagnosed stage-II cancer. A mastectomy and chemotherapy followed, but the cancer recurred in her other breast.

Of course, the trial will largely hinge on the testimony of experts. You've retained a breast surgeon who will testify that the cancer was present from the outset and that a biopsy should have been performed after each mammography. Your expert oncologist will say that a prompt diagnosis would have allowed treatment via a simple lumpectomy, with little chance for recurrence. Your opponent's experts will contradict your experts. Now it's up to the jury. … unless you've consulted VerdictSearch. Chances are, our database will have valuable information about your opponent's experts. Would a jury bestow credibility upon the defense's experts if you could show that the pair testified a combined 50 times last year, and always for the defense? Even the slowest of juries can spot a hired gun. But better than a hired gun is a smoking gun: How would you feel about your case if you knew you could impeach those experts with past testimony that contradicted their opinion in this case? Such information is readily available in VerdictSearch's database, which comprises more than 170,000 cases. And don't let the Top 100 fool you: Our database is built on the everyday cases that will help you win and settle your cases ? the hundred-thousand-dollar verdict in a trip-and-fall case, the defense victory in a threshold case, or any one of the other thousands of bench decisions, settlements, mediations and arbitrations that never reach traditional media outlets. So while we hope you'll enjoy this year's Top 100 coverage, when it comes time to get back to work, please remember the other 170,000 or so!

For further examples of the information we can provide, check the charts on the accompanying pages. Digest the trends revealed by these charts, then consider how this or similar information can help you prevail in your next case.

Call 1-800-832-1900 or go to www.VerdictSearch.com or e-mail info@verdictsearch.com

Two line graphs; two different results. Last year's mean plaintiff's verdict in premises-liability cases did not move much from the four-year average of $2,024,700.33, dropping a mere 3.8 percent to $1,946,825. However, the median jumped 57.5 percent, to $453,500. Explanation? A big change at the poles. Note the pie graph, which indicates that 17 percent of these plaintiff's victories resulted in verdicts of $50,000 or less. Last year, that category totaled 25 percent. At the top end, 26 percent of these plaintiff's victories equaled or exceeded $1 million. Last year, such cases claimed merely 21 percent of the pie. Nevertheless, award distributions remain somewhat evenly scattered. This undoubtedly reflects the wide

The past three years have seen a significant increase of the amount of money that the average plaintiff receives from a jury in cases that stem from motor-vehicle accidents. Last year's mean and median verdicts increased by 14.2 and 14.4 percent from 2010's numbers and 30.2 and 19.8 percent from 2008's numbers. Last year's median award, $41,317, still falls comfortably within the coverage range of most auto-insurance policies, but the pie chart shows that some 21 percent of plaintiff's verdicts equal or exceed $250,000, meaning that the common $300,000/$100,000 policy just doesn't get the job done in many instances.

Like the premises-liability sector, the wrongful-death sector's mean and median plaintiff's verdicts moved in opposite directions last year. But there is a different reason: an uncommon lack of monster verdicts. In the interest of keeping the numbers realistic, we eliminated the blockbuster $150 billion wrongful-death case that topped last year's chart. The next two largest wrongful-death verdicts totaled slightly more than $64 million, whereas 2010's numbers included two wrongful-death cases that combined to exceed $360 million. So while the median plaintiff's verdict in these cases jumped 20 percent, the mean crumbled. Nevertheless, the pie chart shows that 30 percent of these verdicts still equal or exceed $5 million.

After a decline in 2010, the mean plaintiff's verdict in medical-malpractice cases skyrocketed last year, increasing by 93 percent, to $6,515,740. But while the mean climbed, the median, which is more insulated from the effects of a few tremendous verdicts, remained relatively stable, checking in at $1,470,162, just 2.2 percent below the prior four years' median of $1,503,710.56. The pie chart reveals another constant: About 22 percent of all medicalmalpractice plaintiff's verdicts equal or exceed $5 million, which is a trend that has held for years. Likewise, roughly 53 percent of medical-malpractice plaintiff's verdicts fall between $250,000 and $2.5 million. This and all data on these pages is based on cases reported by VerdictSearch.

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