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Turning on Those Who Turn to the Courts: Experimental Evidence of Backlash Against Personal Injury Litigants

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2023

Jeb Barnes ,
Elli Menounou Open the ORCID record for Elli Menounou [Opens in a new window]  and
Parker Hevron
Jeb Barnes
Affiliation:
University of Southern California, Department of Political Science, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Elli Menounou
Affiliation:
California State Polytechnic University, Department of Political Science, Pomona, CA, USA
Parker Hevron*
Affiliation:
Texas Woman’s University, Department of Social Sciences & Historical Studies, Denton, TX, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

Do people turn on those who turn to the courts? Using a survey experiment, we find people have significantly more negative attitudes toward personal injury litigants than other types of claimants, even when they believe the claimant is injured and mostly not at fault. Moreover, our subjects were not anti-claim, anti-hiring a lawyer, or even anti-government program. Instead, they were distinctively anti-litigant.

Keywords

LitigationExperimentsTort
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Law and Courts , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , April 2024 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Law and Courts Organized Section of the American Political Science Association

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