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Settlement or Trial?
Posted by: Larry Lapidus
August 13, 2008
Topic: Settlement or Trial?
A recent study, published in the New York Times on August 7th, has concluded that settlement is nearly always better than going to trial. The study of course was conducted by a consulting firm linked to corporate interests and relies heaving on general statics whose origin is unclear in the New York Times article. The study included 2,054 cases which went to trial (does not say where these cases were) and compared the trial results with the reported offers. The author of the study did concede that there was no way to know whether the 80-90% of the cases which did settle would have produced more money for the victims at trial. But the author of the study concluded that in the cases studied, "plaintiffs got less money than if they had taken the original offer" .
Of the lawyers who were asked to comment, virtually all said that the study means nothing when it comes down to individual cases because each one depends on the facts and the applicable law. All stressed the importance of the lawyer's experience in advising clients in the decision to settle or go to trial.
My experience has been that when clients insist on a trial against my better judgment, the verdict has been the same as the offer or less. Even if the verdict is the same as the offer, the client will net less money because of the increase of expenses to go to trial. Still there are many cases where the carrier misjudges the case value and the offer is far too low. In those cases, my experience is that the offer can be improved by going to trial if the liability issue is clear. For more details on this, see the client testimonial page of this site.
