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Crime --- Prisoners

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Workers in California experiencing injuries at work that result in permanent partial disabilities (PPD) are eligible to receive compensation. The workers' benefits, doctors' and attorneys' fees, and the system that processes the hundreds of thousands of annual claims cost employers billions of dollars each year. This report evaluates the workers' compensation system by examining its efficiency and the adequacy and equity of its benefits, and suggests system reforms. The authors conducted interviews with system participants and found that the system is still troubled by many of the same problems that plagued it before the 1989 and 1993 reforms. It remains overly costly, complex, and litigious while delivering modest benefits. The authors estimated the wage losses of PPD claimants in 1991-93, and found that even after five years, the injured workers earned considerably less than controls. In addition, injured workers experience considerable time out of work, not just immediately after the injury, but also after the initial return to work. The authors identified particular problems among claims categorized by the workers' compensation system as "minor," the vast majority of claims. For this group, wage replacement rates were lowest. Reform proposals include an elective fast track to streamline claims processing, and a revision to the disability rating schedule to improve the relationship between wage loss and benefits paid.

Workers' compensation

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Based on cases that reached jury verdict in Cook County, Illinois, and San Francisco, California, from 1960 to 1984, this report presents analytically derived answers to questions surrounding the award of punitive damages: (1) how frequently punitive damages are awarded in civil suits, (2) what types of cases and defendants are most subject to such awards, and (3) what proportion of the monies awarded in punitive damages is actually paid out. The findings confirm trends for which there had only been anecdotal evidence: The incidence of punitive damage awards (measured by proportion of cases in which such awards are made) and the amount of money (measured in constant 1984 dollars) awarded for punitive purposes have increased substantially over the years. Corporate defendants are in fact more likely than individuals or public agencies to be the target of such awards. Many damage awards are significantly reduced and only about half of the dollars awarded are ultimately paid subsequent to award at the trial court level.

Exemplary damages

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This report extends earlier efforts to document and analyze the outcomes produced by the civil justice system based on studies of civil jury trials in Cook County, Illinois, and San Francisco County, California. First, the report updates the earlier work by incorporating data for the years 1980 through 1984. Second, it expands the scope of the study to include the entire state of California. Past patterns in jury awards continued in Cook County during the 1980s: The size of most jury awards did not increase (the median actually fell), but large jury awards, and therefore the average, increased sharply. The pattern that prevailed in both jurisdictions during the 1960s and 1970s, however, changed in San Francisco: There was a substantial increase in the size of awards during the 1980s across the entire range of cases tried in state and federal courts. Unlike past findings, the increase was not restricted to a few very large awards. The average award increased as in previous years, but median awards also increased to triple the median of the late 1970s.

Jury