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The Public Ordering of Private Relations Part Two: Winning Civil Court Cases

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1975

Craig Wanner*
Affiliation:
Jersey City State College
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Extract

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This paper analyzes who wins and loses in the civil trial courts in Baltimore, Cleveland and Milwaukee. Research was conducted during 1971 and 1972 when a total of 7,800 civil court cases were examined and summarized from the case folders and dockets of courts of first instance with general jurisdiction in Baltimore, Cleveland and Milwaukee. Cases were selected randomly, sampling without replacement, from the 1965 and 1970 records of cases filed from those court records which were open to public inspection (records of paternity suits and adoptions, for instance, were not available). Cases were coded by: (1) the type of legal action initiated; (2) the outcome; (3) the names and addresses of all litigants; (4) the names of law firms and attorneys; (5) the date of filing; (6) the date of last recorded docket entry; (7) the number of court proceedings docketed; (8) the amount of money in dispute; (9) the amount of money awarded as damages; and (10) the census tract of each litigant.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1975 The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

*

Part One of this article appeared in Volume 8, Number 3 of Law & Society Review at page 421.

References

JACOB, Herbert (1973) Urban Justice. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
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WANNER, Craig (1973) “A Harvest of Profits.” A paper presented at the 68th Annual Convention of the American Political Science Association at New Orleans.Google Scholar
WANNER, Craig (1974) “The Public Ordering of Private Relations, Part One: Initiating Civil Cases in Urban Trial Courts,” 8 Law & Society Review 421.Google Scholar