Comparing Civil Trial Courts in Five States: Win/Loss Rates, Award Amounts, Docket Composition, and Institutions.

This research develops an integrated model of trial court decision-making utilizing an original data set comprised of all civil trial verdicts decided in the states of Alabama, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee in 2009. The paper then descriptively examines the variables associated with jury verdicts in the five states in terms of winners and losers, awards, docket composition, institutional variation, litigants, and alleged injuries. I uncover considerable variation across the states on each indicator. This research improves our knowledge of trial court decision-making by creating a comprehensive data set of civil jury verdicts, providing a concrete comparison of variation across states, and by contributing a theoretical model of decisionmaking in civil trial courts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]