U.S. Suits Multiply, but Fewer Ever Get to Trial, Study Says
By ADAM LIPTAK

In television and in the popular imagination, lawsuits and prosecutions end in trials, in open court before a jury. In reality, according to a new study, trials have become quite uncommon.

In 1962, the study says, 11.5 percent of all civil cases in federal court went to trial. By last year, that number had dropped to 1.8 percent. And even though there are five times as many lawsuits today, the raw number of civil trials has dropped, too. They peaked in 1985 at 12,529. Last year, 4,569 civil cases were tried in federal court.

"What's documented here," William G. Young, the chief judge of the Federal District Court in Boston, said in a telephone interview, "is nothing less than the passing of the common law adversarial system that is uniquely American."

The percentage of federal criminal prosecutions resolved by trials also declined, to less than 5 percent last year from 15 percent in 1962. The number of prosecutions more than doubled in the last four decades, but the number of criminal trials fell, to 3,574 last year from 5,097 in 1962.

The study, based on data compiled by the federal court system, was prepared by Marc Galanter, who teaches law at the University of Wisconsin and the London School of Economics, for the American Bar Association.

"This is a cultural shift of enormous significance," said Arthur Miller, a law professor at Harvard.