What Has Contributed to a Decade of Increasing Civil Case Filings?

A look at 10 years of civil case filings in the federal courts shows a 20 percent increase in these filings between 1990 and 2000. Filings in 1990 totaled 217,013. The number of civil cases filed dropped in 1991, but then rose 29 percent from 1991 to 1997, when the cases filed peaked for the decade in 1997 at 272,027. Case filings in 2000 totaled 259,517.

If Americans are filing more civil suits, at least in federal courts, what types of cases contributed to the increase? The major increases in civil filings since 1990 have occurred in the number of prisoner petitions, personal injury, civil rights cases, and the recovery of overpayments and enforcements of judgments.

Prisoner petitions increased 35 percent over the last decade. An increase of these cases in the mid-1990s was due in large part to the passage of legislation aimed at curtailing litigation—and the anticipation by prisoners that the legislation would affect their ability to file cases. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Bailey v. United States in 1995 restricted the imposition of enhanced penalties for using firearms and resulted in substantial increases in motions to vacate sentence between 1996 and 1997. The 1996 Prison Litigation Reform Act imposed fees as a means of reducing frivolous petitions and may have led many inmates to file petitions before the fee requirement became effective. The 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act established a one-year limitation period for filing prisoner petitions, which may have led prisoners to file motions to vacate sentence before the period expired. Motions to vacate sentence doubled to more than 6,000 between 1990 and 2000. Habeas corpus petitions jumped 92 percent.

Legislation may have contributed to increases in civil rights filings, which more than doubled between 1990 and 2000. Following the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and the Civil Rights Act of 1991, employment filings increased every year from 1990 to 1997. Since 1998 these filings have stabilized, growing 1 to 2 percent each year.

An influx of breast implant cases caused the number of personal injury cases to increase every year from 1992 to 1996. However, the termination of many of these cases over the last two years contributed to the 10-year overall decline in personal injury filings. Personal injury filings ended the decade down 24 percent, reaching their lowest level in 2000.

Finally, by the end of the decade the number of civil cases filed for recovery of overpayments and enforcement of judgments had more than doubled after reaching a 10-year low in 1995. Filings increased largely because the Department of Education intensified its debt collection procedures, which resulted in marked increases in student loan recovery filings.