Louisiana jury awards exceeding $10 million over the years 2009 to 2023 amounted to a total payout of $9.97 billion, making the Bayou State sixth in the nation in terms of the combined value of these so-called “nuclear verdicts.”
The data comes from a new report by the public relations firm Marathon Strategies, which found that such eight-figure jury damages awards increased 27 percent last year following a downturn in such verdicts during the COVID-19 pandemic years.
In Louisiana, pharmaceuticals, oil and gas, and trucking were the industries most affected by these large verdicts, according to the report. Last year, Louisiana’s nuclear verdicts in state and federal court totaled $437 million in damages, Marathon Strategies concluded.
Phil Singer, the Marathon Strategies CEO, said the frequency of nuclear verdicts has been ticking up nationwide over the past 15 years or so, and researchers have identified several factors that have contributed to the rise.
“One is a series of tactics that the trial lawyers have deployed to gin up the verdicts the juries are issuing,” Singer told the Louisiana Record.
One of these tactics is “anchoring,” referring to how attorneys can suggest an outsized damages award to juries to get the inflated sum “anchored” in jurors’ minds, he said.
“Other types of legal tactics along those lines (include) something known as the reptilian theory, where lawyers appeal to the emotional side of the brain as opposed to the legal side of the brain,” Singer said.
The report also points to shifts in attitudes of the jury pool in the wake of the Great Recession of 2009, including more pro-plaintiff millennials being called to rule on cases involving product liability and other disputes.
“While many factors have influenced this growth (in large verdicts), Marathon’s analysis of nuclear verdicts from 2009 to 2022 identified corporate mistrust, social pessimism, erosion of tort reform and public desensitization to large numbers as among the most important,” the report states.
In addition, potential jurors are more likely to have seen trial-attorney advertising that creates impressions in their minds about the scope of jury awards, according to Singer.
“With the growth of attorney advertising – which now eclipses $1 billion each year – aggressive parties plaster American televisions with ads seeking plaintiffs for mass tort litigation, amplifying denigrating claims and furthering the cycle of nuclear verdicts,” the Marathon report states.
The Louisiana verdict numbers over the examined time period were somewhat distorted by a $9 billion outlier jury award about a decade ago in the case of Allen v.Takeda Pharmaceuticals North America. Factor out that case, and it becomes apparent that cases involving the oil and gas industry were the driver of large verdicts in the state, Singer said.
He added, however, that the report did not take into account the result of appeals that led to the reduction of nuclear verdicts. For example, in the Allen v. Takeda case, that award was later lowered to $36.8 million, according to a Reuters report.
Those states that have implemented tort-reform legislation have begun to see limitations in the size of their jury awards in the state and federal systems, Singer said.
The report showed Louisiana ranked eighth for the value of its nuclear verdicts in 2023 only.
Nationwide, most of the cases identified in the report (37%) dealt with product liability issues, which parallels historical norms, while nuclear verdicts in intellectual property matters dropped 43% from their historical baseline, the report states.