One criticism of the American civil justice system is that plaintiffs in civil suits sometimes receive unduly large settlements. Supporters of tort reform, which limits the types of disputes that can be taken to court and places caps on settlements, charge that these lawsuits damage the U.S. economy. However, other commentators maintain that these settlements are rare and involve circumstances that their critics ignore.

Lawsuits are much more common in the United States than in other industrialized nations. According to Californians Against Lawsuit Abuse (CALA), forty thousand product liability lawsuits are filed each year in America, compared to two hundred such suits in the United Kingdom. CALA also notes that the United States has thirty times as many lawsuits per person as Japan. In 1999, the median award for these lawsuits was $1.8 million. CALA charges that the...