New Emprical Study on Summary Judgment

An article entitled “Summary Judgment Cases Over Time, Across Case Categories, and Across Districts: An Empirical Study of Three Large Federal Districts,” by Theodore Eisenberg & Charlotte Lanvers, just posted on SSRN (available here) reaches some interesting conclusions about summary judgments.  Good for mass tort plaintiffs: the summary judgment rate in tort cases remained steady after the summary judgment trilogy.  Bad for civil rights plaintiffs: summary judgment rates increased in these cases.  Here is the abstract:

Prior research on summary judgment hypothesizes a substantial increasein summary judgment rates after a trilogy of Supreme Court cases in1986 and a disproportionate adverse effect of summary judgment on civilrights cases. This article analyzes summary judgment rates in theEastern District of Pennsylvania (EDPA) and the Northern District ofGeorgia (NDGA), for two time periods, 1980-81 and 2001-02. It alsoanalyzes summary judgment rates for the Central District of California(CDCA) for 1980-81 and for other civil rights cases in the CDCA in1975-76. The combined sample consists of over 5,000 cases. Thethree-district sample for 1980-81 had an overall summary judgment rateof 4.5%. The summary judgment rate increased from 6.5% to7.0% in thetwo-district EDPA and NDGA sample from 1980-81 to 2001-02, astatistically insignificant difference. The pattern was inconsistentacross case categories. For contract, tort, and a residual category ofother noncivil rights cases, there was no evidence of a significantincrease in summary judgment rates over time. Interdistrict differenceswere not dramatic in these three areas except that NDGA had a higherrate of summary judgment in tort and contract cases than did EDPA. Themost striking effect was the approximate doubling – to almost 25% – ofthe NDGA summary judgment rate in employment discrimination cases and asubstantial increase in the NDGA summary judgment rate in other civilrights cases. Subject to the limitation that both time periods studiedare removed in time from the Supreme Court’s 1986 summary judgmenttrilogy, the only strong evidence in this study of a post-trilogyincrease is in NDGA employment discrimination cases. Civil rights caseshad consistently higher summary judgment rates than noncivil rightscases and summary judgment rates were modest in noncivil rights cases.

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