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150 Years of Litigation and Dispute Settlement: A Court Tale

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2024

Wayne McIntosh
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Abstract

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This article examines the behavior of civil litigants in a state general jurisdiction trial court over an extended period of time, 1820 to 1970. It focuses on whether the dispute resolution function of courts has diminished with social and economic development and rising litigation costs. The data consist of case records sampled at fifteen-year intervals. The samples are broken down into five case issues (domestic relations, torts, debts, nondebt contracts, and property) to determine the degree of change in the legal agenda. The rate of litigation (cases filed per 1000 population) is compared across issues, and disposition patterns over time are analyzed. The findings indicate that trial court processes have not totally converted to “rubber stamp” administration of routine petitions. Although the degree of judicial intervention into cases has changed, the court continues to play a significant role in the resolution of private conflicts.

Type
Part Three-Other Studies of Disputes, Dispute Processing, and Civil Courts
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 15 , Issue 3-4: Special Issue on Dispute Processing and Civil Litigation , 1981 , pp. 823 - 848
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 The Law and Society Association.

References

1 The first step in the data collection process was to peruse the entire stock of documents in order to pinpoint the precise storage location of each year's files and to determine the total number of cases that were filed in each year between 1820 and 1977. The original documents for most of these years are housed in the court archives, but because of space limitations the files for the more current years (beginning with 1930) have been microfilmed. In addition, a random sample of about 250 cases was drawn for close examination for every fifteenth year, yielding eleven sample years and a total of 2873 cases.

2 Lempert (1978: 103) argues that in some divorce cases that end with an uncontested result, “a judge or others attached to the court may devote considerable effort to bringing about the agreement that is necessary for an uncontested judgment to be entered.”

3 “According to this theory, variation in the process of mobilization is a function of the level of complexity, differentiation, and scale of a social structure. The argument is that as the complexity, differentiation, and scale of a society increases, reliance on the courts and other formal public adjudicators also increases” (Sarat and Grossman, 1975: 1209; also see Friedman 1976).

4 These data represent demographic changes within the geographic boundaries of the court's jurisdiction. The court's jurisdiction included St. Louis city and county until 1876; thereafter, only the city, itself. This fact accounts for the large differences in some items, such as population density, between the 1870 and 1880 censuses. Slaves are included in the population figures presented in Table 1 but are not included in the analyses of litigation rates which follow.

5 A litigation rate of 40 cases filed per 1000 population is very high compared to subsequent years. Since 1850 the litigation rate has exceeded 20 cases per 1000 people only once, in 1971. These data are available in tabular form from the author upon request.

6 The original jurisdiction of the Missouri circuit courts has always extended to all property issues, including land title questions and unlawful detainer, all contract issues, and torts with a minimum $50 valuation. The state legislature granted divorce jurisdiction in 1845 (Missouri Revised Statutes, 1845: 426-429). Also, from statehood in 1820 the circuit courts have held appellate jurisdiction over the probate and justice of the peace courts (subsequently renamed magistrate courts). A court of common pleas was established in St. Louis in 1841, given concurrent jurisdiction with the circuit court in 1843, but merged with the circuit bench on January 1, 1866 (Missouri Laws, 1843: 56; Missouri Revised Statutes, 1865: 887). Thus the samples drawn for analysis in this study for 1850 and 1865 include cases from both dockets.

7 Data presented in Figure 2 are available in tabular form upon request from the author.

8 The term “ill-defined” is used here because in the years immediately following American occupation of the Louisiana Territory an attempt was made to merge French and Spanish laws then in use with the British common law in the St. Louis area (English, 1947: Ch. 1).

9 The rate of debt collection cases, as well as the rates of other types of cases, were projected using docket proportions and the overall rate of litigation. This assumes that sample proportions accurately reflect the true docket compositions (Lempert, 1978: 111).

10 The St. Louis Circuit and inferior state trial courts have always held concurrent jurisdiction in cases exceeding $50 valuation and with the following dollar value limitations on the lower court: all cases $90 {Laws of the Territory of Missouri, 1814: Ch. 104); contracts and unlawful detainer $90, torts $50 (Missouri Laws, 1825: 473); contracts and unlawful detainer $200, torts $100 (Missouri Laws, 1868: 59); all cases $250 (Missouri Revised Statutes, 1879: 475); all cases $300 (Missouri Revised Statutes, 1889: 4453); all cases $500 (Missouri Revised Statutes, 1909: 417-418); unlawful detainer, mechanics liens, other personal property $600, contracts and torts $500 (Missouri Revised Statutes, 1919: 1067); all cases $750 (Missouri Revised Statutes, 1939: 673-674); all cases $1500 (Missouri Laws, 1945: 807); all cases $2500 (Missouri Revised Statutes, 1959: 4151-4152); all cases $3500 (Missouri Laws, 1969: 560). The inferior courts have never been granted jurisdiction in cases concerning land title questions, slander, or libel.

11 The vote totals were 561,898 in favor of the new law, and 251,822 against (Missouri Laws, 1927: 490). The Workman's Compensation Act allowed for appeals to the Circuit Court only after a decision had been reached by the Workman's Compensation Commission (Missouri Laws, 1927: 513).

12 Most uncontested judgments represent defaults. Others are consent judgments.

13 Contested judgments include cases resolved at full trial or contested hearings.

14 Nearly 75 percent of the cases sampled for 1820 were lacking disposition information. Of those with complete files, about half were contested, but this figure may be inflated if record keeping was biased in favor of contested cases.

15 Cases dismissed by the court because of no response or failure to secure costs on the part of the plaintiff are counted as dropped.

16 Research efforts are currently in progress that seek answers to these and related questions. See Ladinsky and Susmilch (1980) and Kritzer et al. (1980).

17 Wanner (1974: 423-431) reports that civil litigants can be categorized by the types of complaints they file, and that most plaintiffs are marked by a single, or “primary,” type of action. For example, banks usually resort to court action in order to recover debts, while department stores and manufacturing firms primarily litigate contract suits and debts. Jacob (1969) finds middle-class individuals most likely to become involved in bankruptcy and wage garnishment actions; Dolbeare (1967) cities businesses as frequent participants in land use and zoning litigation. See also Sarat (1976); Galanter (1974).

18 The proportion of cases falling in these categories is as follows:

19 For a discussion of the importance of promissory notes, see Friedman (1973: 236-238).

20 Tables showing types of parties involved in the various case categories are available from the author upon request.

21 Plaintiffs have always been more likely to pay court costs in voluntarily dismissed property cases. Of the 17 cases voluntarily dismissed between 1820 and 1850, plaintiffs paid court costs in 16; plaintiffs paid in 35 of 39 in the 1865-95 period, and in 11 of 17 since the turn of the century.

22 The proportional breakdown of voluntarily dismissed tort cases is as follows:

For references cited in this article, see p. 883.