Today, we’re reviewing civil reversal rates by area of law for the decade of 2000 through 2009. Tops was the reversal rate in wills & estates and workers’ compensation cases – 100%. The Supreme Court reversed 80% of the domestic relations cases it heard from the First District. The Court reversed 77.8% of constitutional law cases and 75% of tax law cases. Two-thirds of the Court’s environmental law cases were reversed. The reversal rate in tort cases was 61.1%. Three-fifths of decisions in arbitration and commercial law were reversed. The reversal rate for civil procedure cases was 58.3%. The reversal rate for government and administrative law cases was 42.9%. One-third of employment law and property law cases were reversed. None of the First District cases in insurance law or contract law were reversed.
Next, we review the Divisions of the First District for outliers. The tort reversal rate was 83.3% in Division Two, two-thirds in Division Three, half in Divisions One and Four and zero in Division Five. All the government/administrative law cases were reversed in Divisions One and Four. One-third was the reversal rate in Division Five and none of the cases were reversed in Division Three. All of the Division One civil procedure cases in Division One were reversed. The reversal rate was two-thirds in Division Four, half in Divisions Three and Five, and one-third in Division Two.
All the constitutional law cases were reversed in Divisions One and Four. The reversal rate was two-thirds in Division Five and one-half in Division Three. All of the commercial law decisions were reversed in Division Four; half were reversed in Division Two and none were reversed in Division Three.
Join us back here next time as we review the reversal rate data for Division Two.
Image courtesy of Flickr by moonjazz (no changes).