Fannie Mae-No Politics (FNMA)

[Robert from yahoo bd]

"A genuine mystery has been hiding in 30 years of data from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, according to a newly released draft study by University of Connecticut law professors Alexandra Lahav and Peter Siegelman. According to the law profs, the winning rate for plaintiffs in civil litigation in federal courts declined drastically and steadily between 1985 and 1995, from about 70 percent to 30 percent."


Win rates recovered a bit in the late 1990s before dipping again, though not as consistently or precipitously. In 2009, plaintiffs prevailed in only 35 percent of the civil cases in federal court that ended in any kind of judicial determination, including dismissal, summary judgment, default judgment or judgment after a jury verdict. That 2009 rate, according to Lahav and Siegelman, is a drop of more than 50 percent from plaintiffs’ success rate in 1985. If plaintiffs had continued to prevail at 1985 rates across the 24 years the professors evaluated, they would have won 377,000 more cases than they actually did.

So what accounts for a drop Lahav and Siegelman call “astonishing”? That’s the mystery: As the professors explain in the paper, entitled “The Curious Incident of the Falling Win Rate,” there’s no single, testable explanation for the dramatic decrease in favorable outcomes for plaintiffs. And that itself is a reason to worry about what the change means.

“A significant puzzle remains unsolved,” the professors wrote. “We are not arguing that the win rate is ‘too high’ or ‘too low.’ Instead, we are pointing out that something or things caused the win rate to change, and depending on the nature of that cause or causes, we may have grounds for concern. If, for example, the changing win rate is caused by exogenous changes such as new, more restrictive laws or procedures, the change itself would not be a cause for concern, although one might question its normative desirability. If judges suddenly became more defendant-friendly, we might think about the falling win rate quite differently.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-otc-mystery/stunning-drop-in-federal-plaintiffs-win-rate-is-complete-mystery-new-study-idUSKBN19J2MB