Venue Non-Economic Performance
Non-Economic Damages Model
We collect court case verdicts from many different sources. Plaintiff verdicts that have allocation details are used by our non-economic damages model. We built a proprietary model that looks at each case in our extensive database to predict what the non-economic damages should have been for any given case. The model operates at the individual plaintiff level and incorporates a variety of case characteristics, including state, venue, plaintiff injuries and ages, medical specials, lost wages, number of derivative claimants, line of business and a host of other factors.
Blended Model
When a venue has fewer than thirty allocated verdicts, correlated state and national data is incorporated into the model, using a more representative sample size to calculate expected damages awarded. This approach clarifies the distinction between historical experience and model risk, leading to more precise predictions.
Venue Modeled Performance
Venue modeled performance represents the total actual non-economic damages across all cases in the venue divided by the total predicted non-economic damages across all cases in the venue. If the ratio is above one then the actual venue results performed better than the predicted results. If the ratio is below one then the actual venue results performed worse than the predicted results. The amount over or under one is represented as a percentage above or below expected.
The model has been constructed to isolate the influence of the state, venue and attorney, enabling you to understand their separate impacts. Perhaps in your value assessment of the case, you have already factored in the influence of the state and only seek a better understanding of how the venue and/or attorney may impact your non-economic damages predictions. You can easily do that by de-selecting the state.
Count Of Historical Verdict Beating The Model
Verdicts that beat the model are verdicts whose actual non-economic damages are higher than the predicted non-economic damages for that case. SigmaSight shows the total number of cases above the model over the total number of plaintiff verdicts with allocations that were able to be run through the model.
Historical Verdicts Compared to Model
The total actual non-economic damages across all cases in the venue minus the total predicted non-economic damages across all cases in the venue.
Non-Economic Damages Model Chart
Each bubble represents a verdict with allocations within the venue. The color of the bubble represents the type of case of the verdict: Motor Vehicle, Premises Liability, Product Liability, Medical Malpractice, and Other. The size of the bubble represents the size of the verdict: Under $50k, $50k - $249k, $250k - $999k, $1M - $9M, $10M - $99M, and $100M+.
Each bubble has a hover over with additional details including:
- the size of the verdict
- non-economic performance of the verdict
- the actual non-economic damages minus the predicted non-economic damages for the case
- type of case of the verdict
More About Non-Economic Damages Model
Our verdict data enables our users to evaluate the performance of venues and attorneys in terms of the non-economic damages awards they produce. Plaintiff verdicts that have allocation details are used by our non-economic damages model.
When working with litigation data, tradeoffs must always be made between assessing impact and respecting the credibility of your sample size. We have set a threshold of 30 verdicts for the non-economic performance ratio for a given venue to be considered fully credible. For counties with less than 30 applicable verdicts, we blend the observed non-economic performance ratio with that of the state so that we do not overweight a small number of verdicts.
Venue results are intended to reflect how outcomes within the specific venue differ from outcomes within the state as a whole, so the weighted-average outcome across all venues in the state is equal to the average outcome in the state.