For a group of insurance companies, litigation in the past 12 months dropped or held steady

For a group of insurance companies, litigation in the past 12 months dropped or held steady

Whether people sue more or sue less when the economy declines ought to be a well-understood empirical fact. Managers of in-house legal teams should be able to plan based on the correlation or lack of correlation to the general economy (See my post of July 19, 2009 #1: expected increase of litigation during recession; and Jan. 14, 2011: patent litigation in decline.). Unfortunately, no such clear-cut picture can be drawn.

Therefore it interested me that a recent report, based on data mostly from large U.S. insurance companies, found that 40 percent of them reported a smaller inventory of litigation in the 12 months preceding October 2010. Another 45 percent reported the same inventory level. The Council on Litigation Management commissioned Revere Advisory to conduct the study of litigation in the United States and this finding is on page 4 of its report. You can request a copy from Taylor Smith.