Plaintiff Profiles Can Help Risk Managers: Expert

By Caroline McDonald

NU Online News Service, May 14, 12:03 p.m. EDT?Risk managers and insurers who understand a customer's propensity to sue are better equipped to assess future losses and quantify exposures, said the author of a study of the psychological and demographic factors of individuals who file lawsuits.[@@]

Results of the study, "The Propensity to Sue: Why Do People Seek Legal Action?" were released earlier this month by National Economics Research Associates Inc., in New York.

Persons who are younger, poorer and less educated, who suffer more serious injuries are likeliest to sue, the report by Faten Sabray, Ph.D., found.

Ms. Sabray analyzed raw survey data from a Rand Corp. study of about 3,000 individuals who experienced an injury. She found the propensity to sue to be linked with the perception of fault and the type of accident as well as individual demographic data.

The findings contrast, she said, with previous studies, which examine the cost and severity of an accident when trying to predict litigation behavior.

Ms. Sabray told National Underwriter that in response to suffering ill affects from a pharmaceutical, "you could have 100 people who use a drug but only 15 of them could make a claim," whereas another drug could potentially have more claims made because of the different demographic of its users.

"The personal characteristics of the people exposed could be very important," she said, "their income group, their level of education and their age."

She said risk managers and insurers could use the information to benchmark the level of their claims. For certain products there would be "no reason to expect a high number of claims," she noted.

In general, across different types of personal injuries, "less educated people and lower income people are more likely to file claims," she noted. She said she suspects that "this has something to do with whether or not they have insurance, but I haven't been able to verify that with this study."

Ms. Sabray added that even though older people are "less likely to claim, on average, whether it's a products liability or a car accident or work related," their propensity to claim has little to do with insurance.

The likelihood of actions being filed was found to be somewhat higher in Texas, Mississippi and California.

The propensity to sue was strongly associated with:

? Perception of fault: On average, a person who blames another party, no matter the extent of injury, is about five times more likely to sue than someone who attributes no blame. An injured person who misses 10 days of work and blames another for his or her injuries is eight to 10 times as likely to sue as someone who misses 10 days but does not attribute blame.

? Lower income: Individuals in the survey's lowest income group were 55 percent more likely to sue than those in the highest income group.

? Age: The probability of a 40-year-old filing a claim is 25 percent higher than a 60-year-old, according to the report.

? Level of education: An individual with more than a high school education is 40 percent less likely to sue than someone with less than a 12-grade education and a similar injury.

? Severity of injury: The predicted claiming rate for a minor injury is 11 percent, 14 percent for a moderate injury and 39 percent for a serious injury.

? Type of accident: The probability for claiming action from a car accident is 3.5 times higher than for any other type of accident, the study found.

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Plaintiff Profiles Can Help Risk Managers: Expert

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