The Idaho Verdict Curve: Rising Jury Awards and Litigation Risk

Nicole Hancock
Partner, Litigation

Abstract

Nicole Hancock, Partner in Stoel Rives’ Boise office, discusses the shifting litigation landscape in Idaho and beyond. Post-pandemic, she notes a marked increase in case filings and a sharp rise in jury awards, with million-dollar-plus verdicts becoming more common. Coupled with economic uncertainty, these trends are prompting both more willingness to litigate and greater motivation to settle to control risk. Hancock also examines how federal court backlogs are influencing strategy—sometimes making it advantageous to file in state court for faster resolution, or in federal court for a slower pace and the higher unanimous jury standard. She outlines how these factors are shaping client decisions on where and how to litigate in today’s environment.

Transcript

I am Nicole Hancock, and I am a partner in our Boise office. There are a few things that are influencing what we are seeing now. One, there is just a general overall uptick in the amount of litigation that is being filed. We see a lot more cases that are currently being filed. Coming out of the pandemic, what we have seen in Idaho in particular, is that there is an increase in the amount of jury awards, so what used to be a $1 million or less jury award, there seems to be a desensitization to the financial implications, and then awards are much higher than what we have ever seen in our historical awards by comparison. For our client base, what that means is that there is a greater increase in the number of litigations that are being filed, litigation matters that are being filed, and then the potential awards or the risk or exposure would be higher as well. Those two things, combined and coupled with what we have seen, is maybe some of our clients who are being a little bit more cautious about what is happening in the economy right now, it is difficult for them to know what the impact of tariffs are going to be, or if we are going to have a recession or some other downturns. There is some protectionism that is happening that, coupled with some additional exposures. I think that you are seeing people’s willingness to litigate more but also try and settle more because they want to control for that risk.

The other side of that coin is that because there is a greater number of filings, our federal court system is saturated with cases, at least in the jurisdictions where I practice. We are seeing that it is taking a lot longer to get through the system, which means it tends to be more expensive to litigate as well because in the meantime, the attorneys are spending more time on discovery, or they are spending more time fighting about the case, trying to get the case to progress through because you do not use your downtime to just do nothing, right? It tends to be more expensive as a whole for clients who are going through the system. With the judges that we have in state court, we are seeing that there is a more willingness to control the case as well, more likelihood to rule on dispositive motions in a way that will get rid of issues, trim the case down, or even narrow discovery disputes or narrow the scope of discovery in a way that manages the case more proactively, I think, because of how contentious things have been.

I think that there is an incentive to get into federal court. One, if you are a defendant, it requires a unanimous jury verdict so it is a little bit higher of a standard than the majority of the jury that you would have required for state court so as a defendant, you have some incentive to try and get into federal court. If you are the party that does not care how long the litigation takes, federal court tends to be a little bit slower because of the backlog right now and so you are somewhat incentivized to get into the federal court system because you can slow things down a little bit. Our state court bench tends to use an expedited docket if the parties can agree if a case is of a size or a low enough complexity level, that it merits moving forward faster. You can get through the system a lot faster, but if that is not your goal strategically, sometimes that is an incentive to move into federal court. Of course, you have to have jurisdiction to get there but usually with diversity of jurisdiction, that gives you one option. If not, having some kind of federal question will get you there.