Today we’re beginning a new series of posts. We’re returning to the subject of reversal rates but looking at the data from a slightly different point of view. This time, we’re considering reversal rates by the area of law addressed in a case. First up, reversal rates for the First District Court of Appeal for the years 1990 through 1999.
All decisions the Supreme Court reviewed were reversed in property law, contract law and arbitration. Reversal was 83.33% in insurance law and 80% for environmental and tax law. The reversal rate for employment law and secured transactions was 75%. The reversal rate for tort cases was 66.67% and it was 62.5% in civil procedure. The reversal rate for domestic relations was 57.1%. Government and administrative law’s reversal rate was 55.56%. Exactly half of the wills and estates cases from the First District were reversed. The only reversal rates under half were constitutional law – 35.7% – and commercial law with 0%.
Reviewing the court-by-court numbers for outliers, we see that in tort law, Division Two of the First had a decade-long reversal rate of only a third, while Divisions One and Four were at 100%. Division Four was also at 100% for government and administrative law, while Divisions One and Two were at 25%. Divisions Two and Five had 100% reversal rates in civil procedure cases, while Divisions Three and Four were at zero. For constitutional law cases, Division Four was at 100% reversal; Division One was 66.67%, but Divisions Three and Five were at zero.
Join us back here next time as we review the 1990s data for the Second District.
Image courtesy of Flickr by Giuseppe Milo (no changes).