Our friends at Lex Machina have done it again. The creators of the award-winning Legal Analytics® platform have added a new module – federal product liability litigation. This is an exciting step forward for those involved in this complex area of law. The usual level of information: case results, time to case completions, how particular courts rule, and more is still present. However, they’ve added some new – and very valuable – functionality, such as rulings on expert testimony in Daubert hearings, that will make planning your case strategy even easier. The official press release follows.“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.

Screenshot from the Cases screen of Legal Analytics' Federal Product Liability Litigation module. Image courtesy of www.lexmachina.com.

‘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 damage, 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.”

About Lex MachinaLex Machina’s award-winning Legal Analytics® platform is a new categories of legal technology that fundamentally changes how companies and law firms compete in the business and practice of law. Delivered as Software-as a-Service, Lex Machina provides strategic insights on judges, lawyers, parties, and more, mined from millions of pages of legal information. This allows law firms and companies to predict the behaviors and outcomes that different legal strategies will produce, enabling them to win cases and close business.Lex Machina was named “Best Legal Analytics” by readers of The Recorder in 2014, 2015 and 2016, and received the “Best New Product of the Year” award in 2015 from the American Association of Law Libraries.Based in Silicon Valley, Lex Machina is part of LexisNexis, a leading information provider and a pioneer in delivering trusted legal content and insights through innovative research and productivity solutions, supporting the needs of legal professionals at every step of their workflow. By harnessing the power of Big Data, LexisNexis provides legal professionals with essential information and insights derived from an unmatched collection of legal and news content—fueling productivity, confidence, and better outcomes. For more information, please visit www.lexmachina.com.