Lex Machina Expands Award-Winning Legal Analytics Platform Into Federal Product Liability Litigation

USA/Canada News

13
Nov
2017

Editor

Lex Machina, a LexisNexis company, today announced the expansion of its award-winning Legal Analytics® platform to cover federal product liability litigation. The new module is the largest expansion of the platform to date, encompassing nearly 500,000 cases pending since 2009, including 158,000 open cases.

The addition of the product liability data set more than doubles the number of cases available to Legal Analytics users.

The new module provides valuable data-driven insights and trends in case timing, resolutions, findings, and damages for injuries caused by product defects, including medical devices/pharmaceuticals, vehicles, aircraft, asbestos, and more. It also includes subrogation cases, in which a third-party – such as an insurance company – takes over the case on behalf of the plaintiff.

The majority (91%, or 454,166 cases) of federal product liability cases pending since 2009 are part of a multi-district litigation (MDL) – a procedure where cases around the country involving the same incident (or complex set of facts) are transferred and combined into the MDL proceeding for discovery and pretrial. Lex Machina’s sophisticated technologies allow attorneys to filter out the ‘noise’ created by the associated cases and focus only on the master case, or, alternatively, include them to gain additional insights. Lex Machina also illuminates whether a presiding judge has expertise with MDL cases, and provides actual judicial rulings about expert witness admissibility.

“Product liability litigation is a perfect fit for Legal Analytics.  With almost half a million federal product liability cases filed in less than a decade, Legal Analytics is the only way to uncover data driven insights that enable product liability litigators to win cases,“ said Karl Harris, President and COO at Lex Machina.

As part of the product development process, Lex Machina interviewed top product liability attorneys to better understand their needs and incorporated their feedback directly into the new offering. As a result, Lex Machina has added 11 new damages tags, including wrongful death/disfigurement, property damange, lost profits and medical expenses; and 24 new findings, including breach of warranty, defective product, negligence and consumer protection law violations. Lex Machina’s Legal Analytics is the only platform that incorporates these unique filters into its offering.

Some of the key product liability insights found within the data include:

• More than 10,300 vehicle-related product liability cases have been pending since 2009. Last year saw the largest number of vehicle-related product liability cases filed (2,226 cases).
• The top three district courts for product liability cases pending since 2009, representing 58% of all filings, are: Eastern District of Pennsylvania (29%), Southern District of West Virginia (21%), and Eastern District of Louisiana (8%).
• Asbestos-related filings made up over 140,000 cases pending since 2009 – 97% of which were filed in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Legal Analytics for Product Liability Litigation Webcast

Lex Machina’s Legal Analytics is a “must have” tool for litigators in many of America’s top law firms and corporations. More than half of Am Law 100 law firms use Lex Machina to craft successful litigation strategies, win cases, and land new clients. For more information about Lex Machina’s newest practice area, please register here http://bit.ly/2ysY5y8 for Lex Machina’s Legal Analytics for Product Liability Litigation webcast  (November 14, 9:30 PST). Bob Ambrogi, renown legal tech blogger and Above The Law columnist will introduce the new module, along with with Eric Falkenberry, partner at DLA Piper, and Lex Machina’s chief evangelist and general counsel, Owen Byrd.