Employment discrimination plaintiffs in the district of Maryland

Cornell Law Review

Volumn 96, Issue 5, 2011, Pages 1247-1271

  Brown, Charles A ^a,b,c  

^a OBERLIN COLLEGE   (United States)

^b MIT Sloan School of Management   (United States)

^c Cornell Law Review ^*  (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 80054103875     PISSN: 00108847     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (35)

1. See, e.g., Kevin M. Clermont & Stewart J. Schwab, How Employment Discrimination Plaintiffs Fare in Federal Court, 1 J. EMPIRICAL LEGAL STUD. 429 (2004);
2. Kevin M. Clermont, Theodore Eisenberg & Stewart J. Schwab, How Employment-Discrimination Plaintiffs Fare in the Federal Courts of Appeals, 7 EMP. RTS. & EMP. POL'Y J. 547 (2003);
3. John J. Donohue III & Peter Siegelman, The Changing Nature of Employment Discrimination Litigation, 43 STAN. L. REV. 983 (1991);
4. Laura Beth Nielsen & Robert L. Nelson, Rights Realized? An Empirical Analysis of Employment Discrimination Litigation as a Claiming System, 2005 WIS. L. REV. 663.
5. See, e.g., Kevin M. Clermont & Stewart J. Schwab, Employment Discrimination Plaintiffs in Federal Court: From Bad to Worse?, 3 HARV. L. & POL'Y REV. 103, 103 (2009). Although the focus of empirical research has shifted to the ability of employment discrimination plaintiffs to achieve successful outcomes, the debate surrounding the volume of employment discrimination litigation continues.
6. See Theodore Eisenberg & Charlotte Lanvers, What Is the Settlement Rate and Why Should We Care?, 6 J. EMPIRICAL LEGAL STUD. 111, 112-13 (2009).
7. See Meritor Sav. Bank, FSB v. Vinson, 477 U. S. 57, 65 (1986) ("[I]n 1980 the EEOC issued Guidelines specifying that 'sexual harassment', as there defined, is a form of sex discrimination prohibited by Title VII.").
8. See Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, 42 U. S. C. §§ 12101-12213 (2006).
9. See 29 U. S. C. §§ 2601-2654 (2006).
10. See Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, 29 U. S. C. §§ 621-634 (2006).
11. See John J. Donohue III & Peter Siegelman, The Evolution of Employment Discrimination Law in the 1990s: A Preliminary Empirical Investigation, in HANDBOOK OF EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION RESEARCH: RIGHTS AND REALITIES 261, 273 tbl.4 (Laura Beth Nielson & Robert L. Nelson eds., 2005).
12. 490 U. S. 642 (1989).
13. See 42 U. S. C. § 2000 e-2 (k).
14. See Kimel v. Fla. Bd. of Regents, 528 U. S. 62, 66-67 (2000).
15. See Bd. of Trs. of the Univ. of Ala. v. Garrett, 531 U. S. 356, 360 (2001).
16. See 524 U. S. 775, 807-08 (1998) (articulating the affirmative defense and finding as a matter of law that the city did not exercise reasonable care to prevent the harassing conduct of an employee's supervisors).
17. E.g., Indest v. Freeman Decorating, Inc., 164 F.3d 258, 267 (5th Cir. 1999);
18. see also John H. Marks, Smoke, Mirrors, and the Disappearance of "Vicarious" Liability: The Emergence of a Dubious Summary-Judgment Safe Harbor for Employers Whose Supervisory Personnel Commit Hostile Environment Workplace Harassment, 38 HOUS. L. REV. 1401, 1422-37 (2002) ("[Lower] courts have effectively construed the defense as providing a summary judgment safe harbor against claims of supervisor harassment.").
19. But see David Sherwyn, Michael Heise & Zev J. Eigen, Don't Train Your Employees and Cancel Your "1-800" Harassment Hotline: An Empirical Examination and Correction of the Flaws in the Affirmative Defense to Sexual Harassment Charges, 69 FORDHAM L. REV. 1265, 1292-93 (2001)
20. (observing that when the affirmative defense is applied mechanically, as in Moore v. Sam's Club, 55 F. Supp. 2d 177 (S. D. N. Y. 1999), employers cannot escape vicarious liability if the plaintiff promptly reports the harassment, no matter how many preventative or corrective measures are in place).
21. See generally William L. F. Felstiner et al., The Emergence and Transformation of Disputes: Naming, Blaming, Claiming..., 15 LAW & SOC'Y REV. 631 (1981) (providing a framework for analyzing the emergence and transformation of disputes);
22. Marc Galanter, Reading the Landscape of Disputes: What We Know and Don't Know (and Think We Know) About Our Allegedly Contentious and Litigious Society, 31 UCLA L. REV. 4, 11-36 (1983) (analyzing the dispute and litigation explosion through the lens of the pyramid of disputes);
23. Richard E. Miller & Austin Sarat, Grievances, Claims, and Disputes: Assessing the Adversary Culture, 15 LAW & SOC'Y REV. 525 (1981) (analyzing the origin of disputes and the incidence of grievances, claims, and disputes).
24. 551 F.3d 297, 300 (4th Cir. 2009). The Supreme Court's decision in Faragher suggests that the formal complaint process may even begin with an internal complaint because failing to utilize the company's complaint process may provide the company with an affirmative defense.
25. See Faragher v. City of Boca Raton, 524 U. S. 775, 806-07 (1998).
26. Frank B. Cross, Comparative Judicial Databases, 83 JUDICATURE 248, 248 (2000).
27. Theodore Eisenberg & Margo Schlanger, The Reliability of the Administrative Office of the U. S. Courts Database: An Initial Empirical Analysis, 78 NOTRE DAME L. REV. 1455, 1462 (2003).
28. Gillian K. Hadfield, Where Have All the Trials Gone? Settlements, Nontrial Adjudications, and Statistical Artifacts in the Changing Disposition of Federal Civil Cases, 1 J. EMPIRICAL LEGAL STUD. 705, 712 (2004).
29. Hadfield, supra note 58, at 711. For reference, the AO disposition codes are: 0 = Transfer/remand: transfer to another district, 1 = Transfer/remand: remanded to state court, 2 = Dismissals: want of prosecution, 3 = Dismissals: lack of jurisdiction, 4 = Judgment on: default, 5 = Judgment on: consent, 6 = Judgment on: motion before trial, 7 = Judgment on: jury verdict, 8 = Judgment on: directed verdict, 9 = Judgment on: court trial, 10 = Transfer/remand: multi district litigation, 11 = Transfer/remand: remanded to U. S. Agency, 12 = Dismissals: voluntarily, 13 = Dismissals: settled, 14 = Dismissals: other, 15 = Judgment on: award of arbitrator, 16 = Judgment on: stayed pending bankruptcy, 17 = Judgment on: other, 18 = Judgment on: statistical closing, 19 = Judgment on: appeal affirmed (magistrate judgment), 20 = Judgment on: appeal denied (magistrate judgment),-8 = Missing. INTER-UNIV. CONSORTIUM FOR POLITICAL & SOC. RESEARCH, ICPSR STUDY NO. 22300, FEDERAL COURT CASES: INTEGRATED DATA BASE, 2007-CODEBOOK FOR CIVIL TERMINATIONS DATA at 97-98(2009), available at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/cgi-bin/file?comp =none&study=22300&ds= 1&file-id=1043029.
30. see also Kevin M. Clermont, Litigation Realities Redux, 84 NOTRE DAME L. REV. 1919, 1955 n. 180 (2009) (calling the definition of the settlement rate "critical").
31. The Federal Judicial Center assembles the data gathered by the AO, and the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research disseminates the data through its website. For the 2008 database, see Federal Court Cases: Integrated Data Base, 2008, INTER-U. CONSORTIUM FOR POL. & SOC. RES., http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/studies/25002?archive=ICPSR&q= federal+judicial© enter (last visited Mar. 12, 2011).
32. Kevin M. Clermont & Theodore Eisenberg, Plaintiphobia in the Appellate Courts: Civil Rights Really Do Differ from Negotiable Instruments, 2002 U. ILL. L. REV. 947, 958;
33. See David Benjamin Oppenheimer, Verdicts Matter: An Empirical Study of California Employment Discrimination and Wrongful Discharge Jury Verdicts Reveals Low Success Rates for Women and Minorities, 37 U. C. DAVIS L. REV. 511, 514 (2003) ("The most significant finding is that women and minorities are substantially disadvantaged in bringing certain kinds of employment discrimination claims, as compared with the success rates of all plaintiffs in all employment law jury trials.").
34. See, e.g., Orley Ashenfelter, Theodore Eisenberg & Stewart J. Schwab, Politics and the Judiciary: The Influence of Judicial Background on Case Outcomes, 24 J. LEGAL STUD. 257, 281 (1995) ("Many will be surprised that we cannot find that Republican judges differ from Democratic judges in their treatment of civil rights cases. The religion and gender of the judge had larger but still modest effects.");
35. Gregory C. Sisk, Michael Heise & Andrew P. Morriss, Charting the Influences on the Judicial Mind: An Empirical Study of Judicial Reasoning, 73 N. Y. U. L. REV. 1377, 1467 (1998).