Jury Trials in Iowa

About this time last week the wife and I received our monthly issue of The Iowa Lawyer magazine. I got to flipping through it here this evening and happened across an article on the litigiousness of the state of Iowa (sorry, I can't find a link to an online version -- if you'd like to look for a paper copy, it's on page 12 of Volume 68, issue Number 4).

The gist of the article is that Iowa is not a particularly litigious state. (And that's a good thing.) To highlight this fact, the article reports that 37 of Iowa's 99 counties held no civil jury trials last year. You read that correctly. More than a third of Iowa's counties held no civil jury trials. Another 21 counties held only 1 civil jury trial. Eighteen counties had two. Seven counties held three. Add that up, and 87 of Iowa's 99 counties held three or fewer jury trials. Of the remaining twelve counties, only Woodbury (15), Pottawattamie (12), Polk (33), Johnson (19), Linn (27), and Scott (23), held more than ten.

Overall, there were 262 civil jury trials in Iowa last year, or an average about 2 and 2/3 per county.

Even more interestingly, there has been a 44% percent drop in the total number of jury trials, civil and crimal combined, since 1994.

The article draws the conclusion that perhaps tort reform is not necessary in Iowa. I think that's a defensible position. But what the numbers make me think of another issue: county consolidation. Why should Iowa be maintaining 99 separate courthouses when apparently not too darn many people are making it all the way to the courthouse? I realize that other government functions take place at a courthouse, but really, I'd bet the average Iowan visits their courthouse only once, maybe twice, a year.

And yes, I know, a lot of suits that get filed settle before trial, sometimes on the courthouse steps. What I've heard is that 1 in 20 make it to trial. But settling could be just as easily done if we had fifty, or even thirty counties.