It is my understanding that the vast majority of civil lawsuits in federal court are large corporations suing other large corporations. When I've had cases in federal court, and looked at the dockets during motions day, that seems correct to me. There are a lot of criminal trials, mostly drugs, and the civil docket seems to be mostly big business cases.
In my local state court, more than half of the civil cases are domestic relations, divorce, custody, support.
Products liability cases are few and far between. But maybe it's because Virginia law isn't friendly to products liability cases.
There was a fairly recent trial where the jury awarded $4 million to the parents of a young child that was seriously brain damaged after falling out of a window. The screen popped out, and the plaintiff had a witness who worked for the screen company that testified that the company knew that the screens would pop out and could have corrected it but cut corners in order to save money.
On appeal, the VA Supreme Court reversed and dismissed, holding that the screen was not defective because it was not intended to keep children in, just keep bugs and whatnot out.
Actually I think that's the right result. The father was a moron to let the kid lean against the screen to wave bye-bye to mama. It's a tragedy, but the dad was at fault. |
