March 2006

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Litigation Trends

Nearly 90 percent of U.S. corporations are engaged in lawsuits – with contract disputes and labor/employment claims representing corporate counsel’s biggest cause for concern, according to the 2005 Litigation Trends Survey, released by the law firm of Houston, Texas-based Fulbright & Jaworski LLP.

The survey, which covers litigation trends in more than 10 industry sectors across the United States, asked 354 in-house corporate counsel about top litigation concerns.

Lawsuits are diverting the resources of American businesses regardless of size or location. The survey found that 87 percent of U.S. corporations are engaged in some type of litigation, and the average company juggles a docket of 37 lawsuits at a time.

Companies with revenues under $100 million have an average of 15 active lawsuits at one time. Mid-market companies average 30 lawsuits at once, and for companies with more than $1 billion in revenues, the average number jumps to 147.

The health-care industry faces the greatest number of pending litigation matters, with an average of 64 cases per business. Energy companies had the second-greatest number of cases, followed by technology/communication companies and manufacturers. Tied for fifth were insurance providers and real estate companies.

Disaster Recovery

Eight in 10 small businesses
not ready

Seventy-nine percent of American small businesses say they do not have a disaster recovery plan in place, according to a study by the International Profit Associates Small Business Research Board.

Study participants believe small business is the key to economic recovery after a major disaster such as Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma. More than seven in 10 (71 percent) said that small business is the key to economic recovery. Only 6 percent said small business is not the key to economic recovery and 23 percent were uncertain.

A total of 325 small business owners and senior managers participated in this study.

Teenage Drivers

Shocking statistics won't change for the better until attitudes, mindset change

Every year for the past decade between 5,000 and 6,000 teenagers were killed in motor vehicle accidents. No other kind of hazard or behavior comes close to claiming as many teen lives. And, in addition to those killed each year, some 300,000 are injured.

There has been a proliferation of teen-driver safety programs all across the country in the past several years in an attempt to quell the deaths and injuries, yet, the totals remain constant year after year.

A study conducted by the Allstate Foundation, working with a diverse panel of expert advisers, looked at existing programs and studied the available data. They also commissioned research on teen attitudes toward driving – a national online survey of 1,000 teens between 15 and 17 years old.

Researchers say the findings suggest that the shocking statistics of the last decade won’t change for the better until the safe-driving efforts aimed at teens attack some of the root causes of unsafe teen driving. For the most part, conventional teen-driver safety programs have not addressed root causes associated with teen attitudes and mindset.

• The first of these root causes is social: simple peer pressure nudges teens towards risky driving habits. Research shows that the presence of other teens in a car being driven by a teen significantly increases the chances of a crash – whether or not the passengers are explicitly urging the driver to make unsafe traffic maneuvers.
• The second cause is biological, an issue of brain development. Recent advances in neuroscience reveal that key parts of the brain's decision-making circuitry do not fully develop until the mid-20s. So, in actual driving situations, teens may weigh the consequences of unsafe driving quite differently than adults do. This, combined with the increased appetite for novelty and sensation that most teens experience at the onset of puberty, makes teens more disposed to risk-taking behind the wheel – often with deadly results.

The Allstate Foundation has made a long-term commitment to building a strong, attitude-based teen-driver safety program that launches in 2006.

Child Passengers

SUVs no
safer than passenger cars for kids

Children riding in SUVs have similar injury risks to children who ride in passenger cars, according to research from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The study, published in the journal Pediatrics, found that an SUV’s increased risk of rolling over during a crash offset the safety benefits associated with larger, heavier-weight vehicles.

As part of an on-going research collaboration of Children’s Hospital and State Farm Insurance Cos., researchers looked at crashes reported to State Farm involving 3,933 child occupants between the ages of 0 and 15 years who were in either SUVs or passenger cars that were model year 1998 or newer. The findings revealed that rollover contributes significantly to the risk of injury in both vehicle types and occurred twice as frequently in SUVs. Children involved in rollover crashes were three times more likely to be injured than children in non-rollovers.

Researchers found that children who were not properly restrained in a car seat, booster seat or seatbelt during an SUV rollover were at a 25-fold greater risk for injury as compared to appropriately restrained children. Nearly half of the unrestrained children in these crashes (41 percent) suffered a serious injury versus only three percent of appropriately restrained children in SUVs. Overall, injury risk for appropriately restrained children in passenger cars is less than 2 percent.