Civil Justice Survey of State Courts, 1996 (ICPSR 2883)

Principal Investigator(s): United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics

Summary: In 1996, the Bureau of Justice Statistics awarded a grant to the National Center for State Courts to gather detailed information on tort, contract, and real property rights trial cases in 45 jurisdictions chosen to represent the 75 most populous counties in the nation. The result is this survey, which is a systematic examination of civil trial cases disposed in state general jurisdiction courts. The study expands the 1992 civil jury study, CIVIL JUSTICE SURVEY OF STATE COURTS, 1992 (ICPSR 6587),... (more info)

Series: Civil Justice Survey of State Courts: [United States] Series

• One or more files in this study are not available for download due to special restrictions; consult the restrictions note to learn more. Additional information can also be found in the Use Agreement.

  The data are restricted from general dissemination. Users interested in obtaining these data must complete a Restricted Data Use Agreement form and specify the reasons for the request. A copy of the Restricted Data Use Agreement form can be requested by calling 800-999-0960. Researchers can also download this form as a Portable Document Format (PDF) file from the download page associated with this dataset. Completed forms should be returned to: Director, National Archive of Criminal Justice Data, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, Institute for Social Research, P.O. Box 1248, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1248, or by fax: 734-647-8200.

United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Civil Justice Survey of State Courts, 1996. ICPSR02883-v4. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2011-11-02. doi:10.3886/ICPSR02883.v4

Persistent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR02883.v4

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Summary:   In 1996, the Bureau of Justice Statistics awarded a grant to the National Center for State Courts to gather detailed information on tort, contract, and real property rights trial cases in 45 jurisdictions chosen to represent the 75 most populous counties in the nation. The result is this survey, which is a systematic examination of civil trial cases disposed in state general jurisdiction courts. The study expands the 1992 civil jury study, CIVIL JUSTICE SURVEY OF STATE COURTS, 1992 (ICPSR 6587), by specifically sampling bench and jury trial cases. Information gathered includes the type of case, the presence of legal representation, the type of litigation, the amount of compensatory damages awarded, the amount of punitive damages awarded, and case processing time.

Subject Terms:   case processing, civil courts, civil law, court cases, court system, disposition (legal), lawsuits, state courts

Geographic Coverage:   United States

Time Period:  

• 1996

Date of Collection:  

• 1997-04--1998-09

Universe:   Tort, contract, and real property cases in the 75 most populous counties in the United States.

Data Types:   event/transaction data

Data Collection Notes:

The data collection contains 100 replicate weight variables (REPWT1 to REPWT100) appropriate for calculating sampling errors using the Wesvar PC variance estimation program, plus two variables, VARSTRAT and VARUNIT, that were developed as part of the processing for creating the replicate weights. The replicate weights were created by the jackknife method and the user must specify the JKN variance estimation procedure when using Wesvar PC. The JKN variance estimation procedure will not work correctly unless two factor files are attached to the Wesvar file. Users should download da2883.p2 and da2883.p3, change the file names to fpc96.txt and jknf96.txt, and attach both files to the Wesvar data file. In addition, the degrees of freedom should be set at 81 in Wesvar (100 replicate weights, 19 varstrat units) in order to calculate the correct confidence intervals.

Sample:   A two-stage stratified sample was drawn, with 45 of the 75 most populous counties selected at the first stage. The top 75 counties account for about 37 percent of the United States population and about half of all civil filings. The sample consisted of tort, contract, and real property rights cases disposed by trial between January and December 1996. For each sampled case, a standard coding form was manually completed by court staff on-site to record information about litigants, case type, processing time, and award amounts.

Data Source:

standard coding forms completed by court staff

Extent of Processing:  ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

• Performed consistency checks.
• Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Original ICPSR Release:  2000-09-18

Version History:

• 2011-11-02 All parts are being moved to restricted access and will be available only using the restricted access procedures.
• 2004-06-10 The principal investigator revised the replicate weights so that they would more accurately reflect county stratifications. The principal investigator also added a few variables that (1) take inflation into account when calculating the damage awards, and (2) better identify the trial cases. Corresponding changes were made to the SAS and SPSS data definition statements and the codebook.
• 2001-03-15 Additional documentation has been added to the codebook by the principal investigator.
• 2001-03-15 Additional documentation has been added to the codebook by the principal investigator.
• 2000-10-16 The data were revised to change software-specific system missing characters to blanks, and corresponding changes were made to the SAS and SPSS data definition statements and the codebook.

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