1992, 1996, 2001, 2005
The Civil Justice Survey of State Courts (CJSSC) provided a broad, systematic investigation of the nature of civil litigation (i.e., tort, contract, and real property cases) disposed of in a sample of state general jurisdiction courts. Data collected includes information about the types of civil cases litigated at trial, types of plaintiffs and defendants, trial winners, amount of total damages awarded, amount of punitive damages awarded, and case processing time. The 2005 CJSSC marked the first time that the data collection examined general civil trials concluded in a nationally representative sample of urban, suburban, and rural jurisdictions. The prior data collections in 1992, 1996, and 2001 were designed so that inferences could be made about general civil trial litigated in the nation's 75 most populous counties. See supplemental Survey of Civil Appeals.