• Facts About Civil Justice Litigation in the United States PDF
• Misleading Anecdotes About Lawsuits PDF
• The "McDonald's Coffee Case" and Other Fictions
• Arbitration - A Corporate End Run Around the Civil Justice System
  
• Discovery Abuse: How Corporations Abuse Our Civil Justice System
• Lawsuits Save Children's Lives (PDF)
• Lawsuits Save Senior's Lives (PDF)
  
• Lawsuits Save Women's Lives (PDF)
• Compensation Caps – The War on Women, Children, Seniors and the Poor (PDF)
• How Corporations Abuse Our Civil Justice System (PDF)
  
  

Lawsuits have always been the critical last line of defense against unsafe corporate practices. Corporate lobbyists, who have enjoyed a gross imbalance of advocacy resources, have made tremendous strides in recent years weakening safety laws and standards. Often, corporations that may have otherwise blocked regulatory oversight have been forced to improve their safety practices because of lawsuits brought by average Americans. Further, as the tobacco litigation so aptly demonstrates, tort actions also force disclosure of often extremely important internal information about products, drugs, toxics, unsafe practices and processes, and force airing these disclosures to millions of people through the mass media. Such disclosures not only alert members of the public to take their own precautions, but also inform regulators and legislators as to the advisability of stronger safety laws. In other words, the public's ability to bring civil lawsuits serves crucial functions that, if weakened in any significant respect, would devastate our nation.

Anecdotal descriptions of a few atypical lawsuits intended to shock or amuse the public are the cornerstone of the business community's anti-lawsuit advertising and public relations campaign since the 1980s. Focusing on a few rare, anecdotal cases, instead of the majority of cases that pass through the courts each year, feeds into a false and dangerous perception that the system is overflowing with frivolous lawsuits. Often such verdicts have either been thrown out or substantially reduced by trial judges or appellate courts, which is exactly how the system is supposed to work. For example, this is exactly what happened in the "McDonald's coffee" case. Yet the public is given the false impression that a plaintiff received a windfall, a defendant was financially ruined, or the system failed. Almost without exception, the facts surrounding anecdotal cases cited by "tort reform" proponents are misrepresented.

Individual copies of fact sheets are available free of charge to certain members and subscribers of CJ&D. A limited number of copies are available for purchase to non-members. Contact CJ&D for information on ordering individual copies of CJ&D's fact sheets.