What did a lawyer sign, call a complaint and file in Ohio 79,000 times in 2006? A product liability suit? A malpractice case? Stumped? The answer: a foreclosure action.

What did a lawyer sign, call a complaint and file in Ohio 348 times in 2006? An adverse possession case? Another oddball type of lawsuit? No. The answer: A product liability case.

There is a litigation crisis in Ohio. It just doesn't happen to involve personal injury lawsuits.

In 2005, the Ohio legislature passed Senate Bill 80 which, among other things, imposed limits on non-economic and punitive damages and abrogated decades of common law jurisprudence in product liability actions. In so doing, the general assembly relied on a "litigation crisis" and a "tort system" that represented a "challenge to the economy." In 2003, the General Assembly dismantled a half-century of medical malpractice common law in Senate Bill 281. In an attempt to legitimize caps on damages, the legislature stated in its findings that "medical malpractice litigation represents an increasing danger to the availability of health care in Ohio." Once again, the implication was that there was a "litigation explosion."

To test the truth of these allegations, this writer embarked on a statistical journey. The first stop was the Ohio Courts Summary, a yearly data collection published by the Ohio Supreme Court since 1999. The Ohio Courts Summary shows the case filings and terminations for all cases including product liability cases, professional torts (which include medical malpractice, legal malpractice and other professional malpractice cases such as accounting, architectural, engineering, etc.) and other torts (which not only include plaintiff's personal injury, but also insurance company subrogation and business vs business lawsuits). The following is a graph showing the number of cases filed in each of those categories from 1999 - 2006:

Except for a small rise in professional tort cases in 2002, the number of professional tort cases shows a steady downward trend since 1999. In fact, professional tort case filings show a 45% decline from 1999 through 2006. To put the2006 figure in perspective, there were 165,094 civil filings in Ohio common pleas courts. Of these, professional torts constituted less than 1% of the cases filed. The statistics also show that only 134 professional tort cases went to trial in 2006.1 Using the statistics cited by the Ohio legislature in Senate Bill 281 that 80% of all malpractice cases which go to trial are found in the defendant's favor, twenty-six plaintiff's professional tort verdicts were awarded in Ohio in 2006, hardly a harbinger of a litigation crisis. Product liability cases in Ohio are even scanter, representing .2% of all lawsuits, and show a decline of 38% from 1999-2006 with only three cases going to trial in 2006. Other tort cases show a 18% decline. This is all in face of a 1% rise in Ohio's population during the same period.

Is there a concern that lawsuits affect the health of a small county's economy and its citizen's access to medical care? Lets survey Ashland County comprising of 52,000 residents in north central Ohio. In 2006, there were three (3) professional tort cases filed; one (1) product liability lawsuit filed and fifty-two (52) other tort cases. However, there were 235 foreclosure cases initiated. In fact, in 67 of Ohio's 88 counties, there were less than ten (10) professional tort filings and less than five (5) product liability filings. Ten counties had no professional tort filings.

Ohio litigation statistics are no different than national statistics. The National Center for State Courts surveyed 17 states from 1993 - 2002 and noted that tort filings decreased by 5% while contract filings increased by 21%.

Since the volume of lawsuits show a litigation implosion, not explosion, what do jury verdicts show. Professor Deborah Merritt of the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law analyzed Franklin County tort verdicts in the issue of the Ohio State Law Journal. Her conclusion was as follows:

Scholars, on the other hand, have long questioned the existence of a tort crisis. Most individuals who suffer personal injuries never file lawsuits. Only a small percentage of filed claims proceed to trial. And both win rates and average verdicts are low for most personal injury claims.

Until recently, little empirical information was available to address this controversy over the need for tort reform. This Article uses data collected form Franklin County, Ohio, to examine jury verdicts rendered during the twelve years before Ohio adopted tort reform in 1996. These findings suggest, as scholars long suspected, that jury verdicts are modest in most personal injury lawsuits. High verdicts in a few high-profile cases capture headlines, but the majority of decisions favor defendants or pay small amounts to plaintiffs.

What have Franklin County verdicts shown since then? From 1998 through 2007, the Columbus Bar Journal kept statistics on jury verdicts in Franklin County. There were five reported product liability cases. Of those, there was one plaintiff's verdict, a four million dollar award in 1999. From 1998 through 2007, there were 58 reported medical malpractice verdicts., approximately 6 per year. There were 17 plaintiff verdicts and 41 zero verdicts. Only 7 were in excess of one million dollars. In other words, there was one million dollar verdict every 1.5 years.

Regarding auto cases, the statistics show the following. From 1998 through 2006, the median verdict was $6,733.00. There were 62 verdicts of zero and 69 were verdicts when there was an award less than $5,001.00. Only three verdicts exceeded one million dollars. Once again, jury verdict statistics belie a system which is the victim of a litigation explosion.

The purpose of tort and malpractice legislation was to reverse an alleged trend in reduction of health care services and was to be a panacea for a fledgling economy. What do the statistics show? Regarding health care, Ohio labor statistics show a rise in health care related employment from 610,400 in 2001 to 654,000 in 2004, the year after the passage of Senate Bill 231. According to Ohio State Medical Board statistics, the number of new physician licenses in Ohio rose from 1327 in 2000 to 1746 in 2004. This hardly shows a decline.

As for the effect on Ohio's economy and tort reform, Ohio's gross domestic product grew from 348.7 billion in 1998 to 440.9 billion in 2005, the year Senate Bill 80 was passed. However after tort reform, Ohio labor statistics show Ohio lost 11,900 goods producing jobs from 2006 - 2007. According to a July 10, 2007 memorandum to Governor Ted Strickland from Pari Sabety, the director of Ohio's Office of Budget and Management, "Economic activity is still experiencing a year long slump . . . Economic activity in and around Ohio has remained sluggish. Real Ohio GDP grew 1.1% in 2006, ranking 47th among all states." The effect of tort legislation warranted no mention in this report.

The Ohio Supreme Court will be deciding the constitutionality of this tort legislation soon, if not before the publication of this article. Let us hope that justices and colleagues will consider the facts and figures to determine whether there was a rational or irrational basis for the passge of these laws.