Lex Machina continues to explore how courts are affected by the social changes due to the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. Our analysis of court activity in March revealed the following:
To understand whether these trends continue, we compared court activity for the first two weeks of April 2018, 2019, and 2020. Our analysis of court activity in April revealed the following:
To understand whether the March trends continued into April, we compared court activity for the first two weeks of April 2018, 2019, and 2020 including 10 business days each year. The specific dates are April 1 to April 14, 2018; April 1 to April 14, 2019; and April 1 to April 14, 2020.
Trends through April 2020 will be analyzed as a standalone data set in a new post at the month’s conclusion.
Case Filings
The table below shows the number of cases filed during the first two weeks of April 2018, 2019, and 2020.
Case filings in antitrust, employment, insurance, patent, product liability, and securities increased from 2019. These practice areas all also had increased filings in March except for antitrust. Otherwise, case filings have decreased, but not by more than 35% in any practice area other than tax.
Case Terminations
The table below includes the number of cases that terminated during the first two weeks of April 2018, 2019, and 2020. In most practice areas, fewer cases terminated in April 2020 than in previous years. The exceptions include three practice areas with small case sets (antitrust, bankruptcy, and environmental), and insurance and product liability, which had small increases (2% and 8% respectively).
Case Findings
The following table shows the number of cases with a finding at the listed judgment event occurring within the relevant time periods. These are specifically the findings that Lex Machina tracks based on our practice areas.
Consistent with March trends, court activity is still down. In the first two weeks of April 2020, 11 cases had findings at trial versus 25 cases in 2019. Cases with findings at summary judgment increased between 2019 and 2020 (with 148 cases in 2019 and 163 cases in 2020) but are lower than in 2018 (with 175 cases).
Keyword Searching
We used keyword searching to gain more information about how the courts are reacting to the recent societal changes. Over 23,000 federal district court cases appear using the search string “covid OR coronavirus OR pandemic” over all PACER civil litigation documents and docket entries filed in 2020. Most of these appeared due to general orders filed in large numbers of cases regarding new court rules.
Tracking New Cases Citing COVID-19 In The Complaint
There are new cases filed in federal district court that cite the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the search string “covid OR coronavirus OR pandemic” over complaint documents in Lex Machina practice areas filed since April 1, 2020, we found over 225 cases. The complaints mention these keywords for various reasons; some merely mention the keywords as part of the current state of events, while others allege claims directly related to the coronavirus health crisis or related societal changes.
Our team continues to monitor litigation data for changes and aims to present meaningful updates to trends as they unfold. At the month’s conclusion, a full analysis of trends for April 2020 will be explored and presented.
To learn more about the data behind this article and what Lex Machina has to offer, visit https://lexmachina.com/.
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