Civil Justice System

One characteristic of the civil justice system is that it is decentralized Different courts can and do come to different conclusions. In 2002, in the case of Cincinnati v. Beretta the Ohio State Supreme Court ruled that plaintiffs had adequately demonstrated that the availability of guns to criminals caused by negligent marketing represented a substantial danger to the community—a major public nuisance. 

Important changes to the Civil Justice System have been implemented following the Woolf Report Access to Justice (1996). The objectives include... 

Hard-pressed by dwindling budgets, the mainstream media was on the lookout for easily digested capsules of information that did not require much independent verification. The tort reformers facile portrayals of the civil justice system were specifically crafted to meet this need. ... 

With George W. Bush in the White House and the Republican Party controlling both houses of Congress in 2001, the business community believed that the time was ripe for another attempt to shape state common law through federal legislation. The Institute for Legal Reform (ILR), which the Chamber of Commerce created in 1998, poured more than 120 million over a seven-year period into the business community s tort reform efforts. At the same time, the business community s allies in academia and think tanks repeated the by-now familiar tort reform mantras, generated a new round of tort myths, and dressed up available data to lend the appearance of authenticity to the third assault on the civil justice system... 

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