Why do Jury Verdicts Make Headlines?

By Byron Warnken, on April 26, 2013

In part, jury verdicts make headlines because huge numbers make headlines.  5,000 people injured in earthquake.  Apple makes $8.2 billion.  The national debt is $16 trillion.  The public likes big numbers.

Interestingly, however, there are a ton of jury verdicts resulting in large payouts that we don’t hear about.  One corporation sues another resulting in numbers on a corporate scale.  This rarely makes headlines.  It’s when individuals recover large dollars that the media takes notice.

But the reason jury verdicts, especially jury verdicts involving individuals, make headlines is because they simply don’t happen that much.

In a study we brought to your attention yesterday, there were more than 350,000 medical malpractice payouts from 1986 to 2010.   That means more than 14,500 per year or more than 7000 per state.  Most interestingly, there were 291 medical malpractice payouts per state, per year.  This is more than one per business day.

The stats cited above are just medical malpractice.  There are far more car accident cases, for example, than there are med mal.  You don’t hear about a large jury verdict on the news everyday.  The vast, vast majority of cases settle.  When there is a large jury verdict, it makes the news.