This time, we’re concluding our examination of the reversal rates of the Courts of Appeal in civil cases during the 1990s. Overall, reversal rates were 100% with respect to property law, contract law and arbitration. Government and administrative law and domestic relations decisions were reversed 83.33% of the time. The reversal rate for insurance was 81.82%. Three-quarters of workers compensation cases were reversed. Two-thirds of election law cases were reversed. The reversal rate for tort cases was 61.8%. For constitutional law, the reversal rate was 60%. Half of employment and tax law decisions were reversed. The reversal rate for civil procedure was 43.33%. No decisions were reversed in wills and estates, environmental law or commercial law.
Reviewing the district-by-district rates looking for outliers – half the decisions from the Third District in tort law were reversed. One-quarter of tort decisions from Division One of the Fourth District were, and one third of decisions from Division Two of the Fourth were. Only 28.6% of government and administrative law decisions from Division One of the Fourth District were reversed. The reversal rate from the Fifth District was zero. The reversal rate from the Fifth District in domestic relations was only two-thirds. The reversal rate in Division Two of the Fourth District was 100%, while the rate in the Fifth District was zero. The reversal rate in the Fifth District for workers compensation cases was zero, while the rate in Division One of the Fourth and the Sixth District was 100%.
Join us back here next time as we continue our review of the data.
Image courtesy of Flickr by Gary Todd (no changes).