Lim on Civil Damage Awards & the Media

Claire Lim (Cornell-Economics) has published Media Influence on Courts:  Evidence from Civil Case Adjudication. 

The study’s findings include:

• As the “liberalness” of a district increases, so too does the likelihood of higher civil trial awards. In other words, liberal districts tended to adjudicate larger final damage awards to plaintiffs. (This general finding is supported by other academic research, as well.)
• More specifically, a one standard deviation increase in the liberalness of political orientation in a district is associated with a 33% increase in the amount of final award in districts with average newspaper coverage.
• However, the influence of political orientation on final awards becomes smaller as media coverage increases.
• Neither the volume of media coverage alone, nor having elected judges, has a statistically significant impact on the amount of final award in civil adjudications.
• Coverage appears to have no statistically significant impact on plaintiff win rates — only on the amount of damage awards adjudicated.

Journalist’s Resource has more details.