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A newsletter from West providing Westlaw® search tips for corporate counsel and staff
July/August, 2007
Case Evaluator: Jury verdict research just got smarter
For years, you've been able to use Westlaw to retrieve jury verdict and settlement summaries within a particular jurisdiction that involve a specific injury, cause of action, party, or other search criteria.
That hasn't changed.
What's new is that you no longer have to sift through a massive pile of documents to determine verdict and settlement trends or learn about experts and expert testimony for particular case types or injuries. The long-awaited Case Evaluator does the sifting for you—and brings you the trends up front!
With
Case Evaluator, you can use a user-friendly search template to generate a report that delivers
- verdict and settlement trends for a particular case type or injury (such as the average, median, and highest award per county or district)
- information about experts who have testified in litigation of a particular case type or injury (such as the number of cases in which each expert has testified and on whose behalf the expert testified)
- excerpts of medical explanations and expert testimony
- links to jury verdict and settlement summaries, full-text court documents, appellate decisions, and medical illustrations and explanations
In other words, you retrieve jury verdict and settlement information, but in a form that makes it easier—and faster—to place a value on your own case, evaluate experts often involved with similar litigation, familiarize yourself with your client's medical issues, and retrieve a variety of related documents.
You can access Case Evaluator via the Site Map by clicking Case Evaluator Reports or via the tabbed Litigation or State Litigation page by clicking Create Report in the Shortcuts section. You can also click Case Evaluator Reports in the Links tab of a jury verdict or settlement summary document you are viewing.
Search example
Suppose your client suffered a strained back when the vehicle he was driving was rear-ended, and you want to view the jury verdict and settlement trends of the Los Angeles area in similar cases.
Go to the Site Map and click Case Evaluator Reports. At the Case Evaluator search template, use the tabs and check boxes provided to select California as the jurisdiction and Rear-End (under Vehicle Negligence) as the case type. Click the Injury Type tab and type strained back in the text box. (The Injury Type tab automatically provides you with a checklist of medical terms most closely related to the terms you type.) Be sure to click the arrow button after making each selection.
After you've made all your selections, click Generate Report. A Case Evaluator report is displayed. The Verdict and Settlement Trends chart reveals, among other information, the per-county distribution of the jury verdict and settlement summary documents retrieved for this injury and the average and median award per county. To view the jury verdict and settlement summary documents in Los Angeles County, click the number of awards listed for Los Angeles, California.