Seventh Amendment: Your Secret Weapon Against Big Corporations

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The Seventh Amendment. It doesn’t deal with criminal law or high-profile political speech; instead, it governs the world of civil disputes—the conflicts between people, businesses, and entities over money, property, and rights.

At its heart, the amendment guarantees the right to a trial by a jury of one’s peers in most federal civil cases.

This is a cornerstone of American democracy, a radical assertion that the ultimate judgment in a legal dispute should not rest with a powerful judge or a government official but rather with a group of ordinary citizens.

For the average person facing off against the vast resources of a large corporation, this constitutional right can be a secret weapon, a mechanism designed to level a tilted playing field and ensure that justice is decided not by wealth or influence.

The Founders’ Guardrail: Understanding the Seventh Amendment

To grasp the power of the Seventh Amendment, one must first understand its text and the revolutionary history that forged it. It is more than just a procedural rule; it is a political institution born from a deep-seated mistrust of concentrated power.

What the Seventh Amendment Says and Why It Matters

The full, official text of the amendment, ratified on December 15, 1791, reads:

“In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.”

This language contains two distinct but related pillars that form the foundation of the civil jury right.

The Preservation Clause

The first is the Preservation Clause: “In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved.” The key word here is “preserved.” The amendment does not create a new right but rather safeguards a right that the Founders believed already existed.

The phrase “suits at common law” is a term of art that refers to a specific type of English legal tradition. In 18th-century England, there were primarily two types of courts: courts of “law” and courts of “equity.” Courts of law handled cases where the plaintiff was seeking monetary damages and used juries to determine the facts of the case—who was at fault and how much money was owed.

Courts of equity, by contrast, were presided over by a single judge (a chancellor) and handled disputes where the remedy sought was not money, but rather an injunction (a court order to do or stop doing something) or specific performance of a contract.

By preserving the jury trial right in “suits at common law,” the Founders were specifically protecting the jury’s role in deciding disputes over money damages.

The Re-examination Clause

The second pillar is the Re-examination Clause: “and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.” This clause acts as the jury’s shield. It establishes that once a jury has listened to the evidence and determined the facts of a case, a federal judge cannot simply substitute their own judgment for the jury’s.

While a judge can order a new trial if there were serious legal errors or if the evidence was truly insufficient to support the verdict, they cannot overturn a jury’s finding of fact just because they disagree with it. This is a profound check on judicial power, ensuring that the jury’s verdict is given immense respect within the legal system.

A Revolutionary History

The battle to include this protection in the Constitution was fierce, rooted in centuries of English and colonial history. The concept of a jury of laypeople deciding disputes dates back to the Middle Ages in England. By the 18th century, it had become a vital tool of political resistance in the American colonies.

As the British Parliament imposed increasingly unpopular laws, such as taxes enacted without American representation, colonial juries began to exercise a form of self-governance by refusing to enforce those laws—a practice known as jury nullification. The Crown’s efforts to curtail this power were seen as a direct assault on the colonists’ liberties, so much so that the Declaration of Independence listed the King’s act of “depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury” as a principal grievance justifying revolution.

After the Revolution, most new state constitutions explicitly protected the right to a jury trial in both civil and criminal cases. However, at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, the issue became divisive. The Federalists, concerned with creating a strong, stable national economy, worried that state-level civil juries, often sympathetic to local debtors, would nullify contracts and undermine the rule of law.

As a result, the right to a civil jury was omitted from the original text of the Constitution. This omission became a major rallying cry for the Anti-Federalists during the ratification debates. They argued that without the protection of a civil jury, the new federal government—with its powerful legislature, executive, and judiciary—would be free to oppress citizens, and the wealthy could easily overpower the poor in court.

The demand was so strong that James Madison, initially a skeptic of the need for a Bill of Rights, included the civil jury guarantee in the amendments he proposed to Congress. As Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story would later write, the Seventh Amendment “is a most important and valuable amendment; and places upon the high ground of constitutional right the inestimable privilege of a trial by jury in civil cases, a privilege scarcely inferior to that in criminal cases.”

The “Historical Test”: What Does “Preserved” Mean?

Because the Seventh Amendment “preserves” a pre-existing right, courts have had to determine precisely what right was being preserved. The Supreme Court has developed what is known as the “historical test.” This test dictates that the right to a jury trial in federal court today is determined by whether the type of legal claim in question would have been tried by a jury in an English court of common law in the year 1791, when the amendment was ratified.

This principle was established over a series of landmark cases. In Parsons v. Bedford (1830), the Court first determined that the “common law” referred to in the amendment was the common law of England, which had inspired the American legal system. Over a century later, in Dimick v. Schiedt (1935), the Court made the final, formative assertion that the specific point of reference was English common law as it existed in 1791.

This means that for any new type of lawsuit created by Congress today—for example, a suit for damages under a federal anti-discrimination statute—a court must look back and ask whether an analogous claim existed in 1791 and whether it would have been heard by a jury. If the answer is yes, the Seventh Amendment right attaches.

The Court has clarified that this test protects the “substance” of the right, not necessarily every procedural detail, allowing for modern adaptations like juries of six instead of the traditional twelve.

A Federal Right, A State-by-State Reality

One of the most crucial and often misunderstood aspects of the Seventh Amendment is its scope. As part of the federal Bill of Rights, it applies directly only to federal courts. In a peculiar quirk of constitutional law, the Supreme Court has never “incorporated” the Seventh Amendment’s civil jury right to apply to state courts through the Fourteenth Amendment, which is the process by which most other protections in the Bill of Rights (like freedom of speech or the right to a criminal jury) were made binding on the states.

The key case establishing this is Minneapolis & St. Louis Railroad Co. v. Bombolis (1916), a decision based on a now-defunct interpretation of the Bill of Rights that has nevertheless left the Seventh Amendment as a constitutional outlier.

This “orphaned” status has profound practical implications. Many, if not most, civil lawsuits that pit an individual against a corporation—such as personal injury claims, medical malpractice suits, or local contract disputes—are filed in state court, not federal court. This means that for the average citizen, their direct “secret weapon” is more likely to be their state constitutional right to a jury trial.

Fortunately, the right to a civil jury was so universally valued at the founding that nearly every state included its own version in its state constitution, making it a nearly ubiquitous feature of American justice.

However, the lack of federal incorporation creates a complex and fragmented legal landscape. While the right itself is widespread, its scope and the protections surrounding it can vary significantly from state to state, differing from the robust federal standard set by the 1791 historical test.

This has fueled an ongoing debate about whether the Seventh Amendment should be incorporated. Opponents raise federalism concerns, arguing that a single national standard would disrupt unique and efficient state legal systems, such as Delaware’s Court of Chancery, a non-jury court that is vital for the swift resolution of complex corporate law disputes. Proponents counter that incorporation is necessary to prevent states from eroding this fundamental right through legislation, ensuring a uniform, strong shield for all Americans against the powerful, regardless of where they live.

The Jury Box as a Seat of Power: The Civil Jury’s Democratic Role

The Seventh Amendment is far more than a mechanism for resolving private disputes. The Founders envisioned the civil jury as a core political institution, a structural element of government that vests a portion of sovereign power directly in the hands of the people. It is a democratic guardrail designed to check the power of the government, the wealthy, and the elite.

A Check on the Powerful and Wealthy

The most potent political function of the civil jury is to act as a bulwark against the abuse of power. The great 18th-century English jurist Sir William Blackstone, whose writings heavily influenced the American Founders, described the jury as the primary defense against oppression. He argued that even “the most powerful individual in the state will be cautious of committing any flagrant invasion of another’s right, when he knows that the fact of his oppression must be examined and decided by twelve indifferent men.”

In this way, the jury “preserves in the hands of the people that share which they ought to have in the administration of public justice, and prevents the encroachments of the more powerful and wealthy citizens”.

This view was deeply ingrained in the American revolutionary spirit. The Founders saw the jury not just as a tool for individuals but as a check on all forms of concentrated power. James Madison, the primary author of the Bill of Rights, declared that “Trial by jury in civil cases is as essential to secure the liberty of the people as any one of the pre-existent rights of nature”.

Alexander Hamilton, in the Federalist Papers, called the civil jury a vital “security against corruption,” believing it would prevent judicial autocracy by taking the ultimate determination of facts out of the hands of a single, potentially biased judge.

This democratic function is fundamentally anti-elitist. It injects community norms and common-sense morality into a legal system that can otherwise become insulated and dominated by professional judges, specialized lawyers, and powerful economic interests.

The ongoing debate over the jury’s competence in complex cases is, at its heart, a modern manifestation of this foundational tension between expertise and populism. When corporate interests argue that a case involving complex financial instruments or scientific evidence is “too complex” for a jury, they are making an argument for rule by experts.

The Seventh Amendment stands as a constitutional commitment to the opposite principle: that the judgment of a diverse group of ordinary citizens is not only adequate but essential for legitimate justice, even in the most complicated of disputes.

Government by the People: The Jury as a “Free School”

Beyond its role as a check on power, the civil jury is a vehicle for civic education and democratic participation. Alexis de Tocqueville, the French political thinker who traveled across America in the 1830s, was struck by the jury’s central role in American life. He saw it as much more than a judicial body; he called it an “institution of government” and “a mode of the sovereignty of the people”.

De Tocqueville famously wrote that the jury “should be regarded as a free school which is always open and in which each juror learns his rights”. By serving on a jury, citizens are not passive subjects of the law; they become active participants in its administration. They are empowered to make binding decisions, to apply legal principles to real-world facts, and to see firsthand how the justice system operates.

This experience, de Tocqueville argued, combats the “individual selfishness which is like rust in society” by making citizens feel they have duties toward their community and a share in its governance.

Modern research has borne out de Tocqueville’s observations. Studies have shown that citizens who serve on a civil jury to the point of reaching a verdict are significantly more likely to vote in subsequent elections and to believe that jury service is a form of civic engagement.

This link between jury service and voting was well understood by the Founders. In the early republic, both were seen as fundamental forms of political participation, twin pillars of popular sovereignty. The jury box, like the voting booth, is a place where citizens directly exercise their power and shape the character of their society.

Leveling the Playing Field: The Jury in Modern Corporate Litigation

In the modern context, the civil jury’s role as a check on the “powerful and wealthy” most often comes into play in lawsuits between individuals and large corporations. Here, the jury can act as the great equalizer, a forum where a single citizen’s claim is heard on its merits, irrespective of the defendant’s size or influence.

The “Anti-Business” Jury: Deconstructing the Myth

A persistent narrative, heavily promoted by corporate lobbying groups and tort reform advocates, holds that juries are inherently biased against business defendants. This “anti-business jury” is portrayed as emotional, irrational, and eager to punish successful companies by siding with plaintiffs and awarding excessive damages based on a “deep pockets” mentality.

This caricature is often used to justify laws that would limit the jury’s power.

However, empirical research paints a far more nuanced and complex picture. While studies do show that juries tend to hold corporate defendants to a higher standard of reasonableness, this is not typically born of simple hostility. Rather, jurors logically expect more from a large, sophisticated entity with vast resources and expertise than they do from an individual.

They believe corporations should exhibit a high degree of care for the safety of their consumers and workers.

Far from being automatically pro-plaintiff, research indicates that the average juror is often quite skeptical of lawsuits and inclined to believe that many are frivolous.

Furthermore, the idea that juries are irrational decision-makers is sharply contradicted by studies comparing their verdicts to those of judges. The landmark University of Chicago Jury Project, and subsequent research, found that judges agree with jury verdicts in about 78% of cases, a remarkably high rate of concordance that undermines the notion of the “runaway jury.” When they do disagree, it is often on the amount of damages, not on the finding of liability itself.

Case Study: The Real Story of the McDonald’s Hot Coffee Case (Liebeck v. McDonald’s)

No case has been more central to the “anti-business jury” narrative than Liebeck v. McDonald’s Restaurants, popularly known as the “hot coffee case.” It has become a cultural touchstone, a shorthand for frivolous litigation and jackpot justice.

The story, as widely told by media and tort reform advocates, is simple and infuriating: a woman spilled coffee on herself while driving, sued McDonald’s for millions, and a gullible jury handed her a fortune. The facts that the jury actually heard, however, tell a dramatically different story of corporate callousness and a reasonable jury decision.

The Myth vs. The Facts the Jury Heard

Severity of the Injury: The plaintiff, 79-year-old Stella Liebeck, was not driving; she was a passenger in a parked car when she spilled the coffee while trying to add cream and sugar. The coffee was not merely hot; it was scalding. It caused horrific third-degree burns—burns that destroy the full thickness of the skin—over 16% of her body, primarily in her pelvic region.

She required an eight-day hospital stay, extensive and painful skin grafting procedures, and was left with permanent disfigurement and partial disability for two years.

The Coffee’s Dangerous Temperature: The jury learned that McDonald’s corporate policy required its franchisees to hold coffee at 180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit. Liquids at that temperature can cause third-degree burns in as little as two to seven seconds.

For comparison, coffee brewed at home is typically around 135-140°F, and other restaurants at the time served coffee at around 160°F, which takes significantly longer to cause such a severe burn, giving a person time to wipe it away. McDonald’s own quality assurance manager testified that coffee at 180-190°F was not fit for consumption because it would burn the mouth and throat.

McDonald’s Prior Knowledge and Disregard: Perhaps the most damning evidence for the jury was that this was not an isolated incident. McDonald’s had received more than 700 prior reports of customers being burned by its coffee, including many severe burns to children and adults, and had paid out over $500,000 in settlements.

Despite this decade-long history of injuries, the company had made no effort to lower the temperature or provide more adequate warnings on its cups. An expert for the company testified that the number of burns was statistically insignificant compared to the billions of cups of coffee served, an argument that jurors later said demonstrated a “callous disregard for the safety of the people”.

The Lawsuit and the Verdict: Stella Liebeck was not looking for a “jackpot.” Initially, she asked McDonald’s only for $20,000 to cover her out-of-pocket medical expenses and her daughter’s lost income from caring for her. McDonald’s responded with an offer of just $800. It was only then that she filed suit.

After hearing all the evidence, the jury applied the principles of comparative negligence, finding that McDonald’s was 80% responsible and Liebeck was 20% at fault. They awarded her $200,000 in compensatory damages (for her medical bills, pain, and suffering), which was reduced to $160,000 to account for her share of the fault.

To punish the company for its reckless conduct and to deter future harm, they awarded $2.7 million in punitive damages—an amount they calculated as being equivalent to just two days of McDonald’s coffee sales revenue. The trial judge, while calling McDonald’s conduct “willful, wanton, and reckless,” later reduced the punitive award to $480,000. The parties ultimately settled for a confidential amount reported to be less than $500,000.

The Liebeck case is a powerful illustration not of a broken jury system, but of a jury system working exactly as intended: a group of citizens heard the facts, weighed the evidence, and held a powerful corporation accountable for knowingly endangering its customers.

Landmark Supreme Court Cases: Defining the Jury’s Role

The Supreme Court has played a critical role in defining the boundaries of the Seventh Amendment right, particularly in the modern era where legal and equitable claims are often intertwined in the same lawsuit.

After the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure merged the separate courts of law and equity in 1938, a new problem arose: what happens when a single lawsuit involves claims for monetary damages (legal, for a jury) and claims for an injunction (equitable, for a judge)? In a series of crucial cases, the Court consistently prioritized and protected the jury right.

In Beacon Theatres, Inc. v. Westover (1959), the Court established a vital principle. It held that when legal and equitable issues are present in the same case, any factual questions common to both must be tried by a jury first, before a judge rules on the equitable claims. This prevents a judge’s decision on an equitable issue from effectively precluding a jury from deciding the same facts in the legal claim, a rule designed to preserve the jury trial right “whenever possible”.

Just a few years later, in Dairy Queen, Inc. v. Wood (1962), the Court reinforced this rule. It held that the right to a jury trial on a legal claim for money damages cannot be denied simply because it is characterized as “incidental” to a more dominant equitable claim. The legal claim must be tried first by a jury.

Then, in Ross v. Bernhard (1970), the Court delivered a landmark decision that was both an expansion and a clarification of the right. The case involved a shareholder derivative suit—a type of lawsuit traditionally brought in equity where shareholders sue on behalf of the corporation. The Court held that the right to a jury trial depends not on the procedural framework of the lawsuit, but on the nature of the underlying issue to be tried.

If the corporation’s claim, asserted by the shareholders, was for money damages, then the defendants were entitled to a jury trial on that claim. This decision extended the jury right into new territory.

However, the case also affirmed a crucial balancing point: that corporations themselves enjoy the same Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial in federal civil lawsuits as private individuals do. This ensures that the jury is a neutral arbiter, available to all parties in a dispute.

Modern Victories: Holding Corporate Power Accountable

Despite the many challenges facing the civil jury, it remains a potent force for accountability. In recent years, juries across the country have heard complex cases and delivered significant verdicts against some of the world’s largest corporations for a wide range of misconduct, from anticompetitive behavior to discrimination and product liability.

These cases demonstrate that the jury box remains one of the few places where an individual, a group of employees, or even a local government can successfully challenge the actions of a powerful corporation and secure justice on a massive scale.

The Corporate Counter-Offensive: How the Weapon is Being Disarmed

The power of the civil jury has not gone unnoticed by those it is designed to hold in check. For decades, a well-funded and highly coordinated movement, led by corporate and insurance industry interests, has worked to limit the jury’s power, restrict access to the courts, and reframe the public narrative around civil justice.

This counter-offensive has taken many forms, from public relations campaigns to legislative lobbying and the widespread use of contractual fine print.

The “Frivolous Lawsuit” Campaign

At the heart of the effort to weaken the civil jury is a sophisticated public relations campaign centered on the concept of the “frivolous lawsuit”. Organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform (ILR) and the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) have spent millions of dollars promoting the idea that the American legal system is overrun with baseless claims and “runaway juries” that harm the economy and drive up costs for everyone.

The term “frivolous lawsuit” is a powerful political tool. It is used to justify a host of procedural and substantive changes to the law—from damage caps to heightened pleading standards—often without a careful analysis of whether these changes unconstitutionally infringe on the Seventh Amendment right.

The campaign relies on publicizing and often distorting the facts of unusual cases to create a perception of a system in crisis. The Liebeck v. McDonald’s case is the prime example, but others have been used to similar effect.

One such case is Pearson v. Chung, the infamous “$54 million pants lawsuit,” where an administrative law judge sued his local dry cleaner over a lost pair of pants. While the plaintiff’s claims were ultimately rejected and he was ordered to pay the defendants’ court costs, the case was widely publicized as evidence of a legal system gone mad, despite the fact that the system ultimately worked by dismissing the meritless claims.

Similarly, stories like the man who sued a phone company after being hit by a drunk driver in a phone booth were mocked by politicians, obscuring the actual facts of the case: the phone booth’s door was known to be defective and jammed, trapping the man inside as he tried to escape the oncoming car.

While these lobbying groups present themselves as champions of fairness, critics point out that their data and methods can be flawed. One analysis of the U.S. Chamber’s influential survey ranking state liability systems found it to be “methodologically flawed” and “substantively inaccurate,” with respondents demonstrating a poor understanding of the actual laws in the states they were rating.

The Fine-Print Takeover: The Rise of Forced Arbitration

Perhaps the single greatest threat to the Seventh Amendment today is the proliferation of mandatory, pre-dispute arbitration clauses. Buried in the dense fine print of contracts for everything from credit cards and cell phones to employment agreements and nursing home admissions, these clauses force individuals to waive their constitutional right to a trial by jury before any dispute has even arisen.

Instead of going to court, a person with a grievance is required to take their case to a private, binding arbitration process, often overseen by an arbitrator chosen and paid for by the corporation.

This practice represents a powerful end-run around the Seventh Amendment. The amendment guarantees the right to a jury in a court of law. By using contracts to prevent disputes from ever reaching a court, corporations can effectively render the constitutional protection moot.

This symbiotic relationship between the expansive interpretation of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA)—the law governing arbitration—and the erosion of the Seventh Amendment is a defining feature of modern civil justice. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the enforcement of these clauses, creating a system where the jury’s power is not just limited, but eliminated entirely for vast swaths of consumer and employment disputes.

A legal battle is currently being waged in the federal courts over whether these arbitration clauses are valid waivers of a constitutional right. Generally, for a person to waive a fundamental constitutional right, the waiver must be “knowing and voluntary”—a much higher standard than the simple assent required for a typical contract.

Several federal circuit courts have held that this standard applies, meaning an arbitration clause hidden in a contract of adhesion that a consumer never read or understood may be unenforceable. However, other circuits have disagreed, creating a split in the law that leaves the rights of millions of Americans in a state of uncertainty.

Putting a Price on Justice: Tort Reform and Damage Caps

Where forced arbitration seeks to close the courthouse doors entirely, “tort reform” aims to limit what can happen once inside. A “tort” is simply the legal term for a civil wrong that causes harm, such as negligence leading to a personal injury. The tort reform movement, heavily backed by the insurance and medical industries, seeks to pass legislation that restricts the ability of injured people to recover damages.

The primary tool of tort reform is the “damage cap.” In a personal injury case, there are typically two main types of compensatory damages: economic damages, which cover calculable losses like medical bills and lost wages, and non-economic damages, which compensate for subjective, intangible harms like pain, suffering, disfigurement, and loss of enjoyment of life.

A third category, punitive damages, is not meant to compensate the victim but to punish a defendant for particularly egregious or reckless conduct and deter it from happening again.

Tort reform laws typically place statutory “caps,” or limits, on the amount of money a jury can award for non-economic and punitive damages, regardless of the severity of the injury or the egregiousness of the defendant’s conduct.

Proponents argue these caps are necessary to control soaring liability insurance premiums, reduce healthcare costs by curbing “defensive medicine,” and prevent “jackpot justice” from irrational juries.

Opponents argue that damage caps are a blunt instrument that unfairly harms the most catastrophically injured victims, whose pain and suffering are genuinely immense. They contend that the “crisis” in insurance or healthcare costs is often exaggerated by industry interests and that caps represent a legislative intrusion on the jury’s core constitutional function of determining damages based on the specific evidence presented in a case.

Several state supreme courts have agreed with this latter argument, striking down damage caps as unconstitutional violations of their state’s right to a jury trial.

The result is a patchwork of laws across the country, with some states offering robust protections for jury verdicts and others severely limiting them.

Other Procedural Hurdles

Beyond arbitration and tort reform, other legal developments have made it more difficult for plaintiffs to get their cases in front of a jury. In a pair of decisions, Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly (2007) and Ashcroft v. Iqbal (2009), the Supreme Court established a new, heightened “plausibility” standard for pleading a case. This makes it easier for judges to dismiss lawsuits at the very outset if they believe the claims are not plausible on their face, a decision made before the plaintiff has had a chance to gather evidence through discovery.

Similarly, court decisions making it harder to certify class action lawsuits prevent large groups of people with small individual claims from banding together to hold a corporation accountable, effectively denying them their day in court.

The State of the Civil Jury Today: A Statistical Snapshot

The cumulative effect of these legal, political, and procedural pressures has had a dramatic impact on the American civil justice system. The civil jury trial, once envisioned as the primary means of resolving disputes, has become a rare event. This phenomenon, often called the “vanishing trial,” is perhaps the most significant, overarching threat to the Seventh Amendment’s relevance in the 21st century.

How Many Cases Actually Reach a Jury?

Statistical data from government sources provides a stark picture of the jury’s decline. In 2019, the last full fiscal year before the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted court operations, juries disposed of just 0.53% of all filed federal civil disputes.

The overwhelming majority of cases are resolved long before a jury is ever empaneled, through settlement, dismissal by a judge, or diversion into private arbitration. While comprehensive, up-to-date national data from state courts is harder to compile, available statistics from sources like the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) confirm a similar trend of declining trial rates over the past several decades.

The various pressures—the high cost of litigation, the risk of legislative caps on damages, the ease of judicial dismissal, and the prevalence of forced arbitration—have created a system where trial is the exception, not the rule. The jury’s power as a check on corporations is severely blunted if cases systematically never reach it. The “secret weapon” is increasingly being kept in its holster.

Who Wins and How Much?

When cases do make it to a jury, the outcomes often defy the “runaway jury” stereotype. An analysis of tort cases in the nation’s 75 largest counties by the BJS found that plaintiffs had varied success depending on the case type. For instance, plaintiffs won in 74% of toxic substance cases, but only 41% of product liability cases and just 30% of medical malpractice cases.

Across all tort cases that went to a jury, the median total award for a plaintiff was $52,000. While some verdicts are indeed very large, as shown in the cases above, the typical outcome is far more modest.

This data from official sources like the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the U.S. Courts’ caseload statistics provides a crucial reality check, suggesting that the civil jury remains a largely sober and deliberative body, and that the narrative of a system plagued by frivolous claims and excessive awards is a significant oversimplification of a much more complex reality.

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