Greetings, who doesn’t love statistics first thing Monday morning?

If you feel busier these days, the numbers prove it.   The Office of the JCC has put out some stats on litigation since the Castellanos decision (4/28/16).  (For some reason I can’t see that they gave us June)

This is the increase in new cases over last year:

May         10%

June            ?

July             0% (no increase over July 2015)

August    16%

Sept           1%

So there are that many more new litigated cases.  And the number of injuries has not increased that drastically, so it is a result of more advertising and probably some of the more questionable claims or low value claims now being able to find an attorney willing to take it on due to fees.

The bigger and more telling statistic is the number of new PFB’s filed on the already open litigated cases.  This is a pure increase in the amount of litigation per file.

May         24%

June            ?

July             0% (no increase over July 2015)

August    20%

Sept          13%

I’m certainly seeing this in my caseload.   And until/unless the law changes this trend will likely continue.   I do think the Miles case will prevent litigation from returning entirely to the prior levels, but it still affects the costs of settlements.  

Sincerely,
Morgan Indek | Partner