Lex Machina 2025 Damage Awards Report Explores Mixed Evidence for “Social Inflation”

By Carla Rydholm | Lex Machina General Manager and Head of Product 

The Lex Machina® 2025 Damage Awards Report provides a comprehensive overview of damage-award trends in United States federal district and circuit courts.  

Recent economic conditions have left companies and law firms wondering – what are lawsuits now worth? If you ask an insurance carrier or a civil defense attorney, they may tell you that “social inflation” in lawsuit damages makes each claim harder than ever to evaluate. 

Since at least the 1830s, however, medical providers, liability insurers, and the civil defense bar in the United States have decried a never-ending lawsuit crisis. Although empirical studies on this subject have consistently highlighted an underlying ambiguity, data and academic literature have surfaced to suggest that recent growth in damage awards may have outpaced general economic inflation rates. Various factors have been proposed to explain this trend, including litigation funding, an increase in attorney advertising, and the “reptile theory” strategy for plaintiffs’ attorneys popularized by David Ball and Don Keenan in their 2009 book, Reptile: The 2009 Manual of the Plaintiff’s Revolution. 

So what happens when the boy who cried wolf finally encounters a real threat? Robust litigation data, exclusively available through Lex Machina, indicate that damage awards for certain civil claims have indeed grown substantially in recent years. On the other hand, deep-level intelligence only available in our Legal Analytics platform suggests that there’s not a clear answer about whether and to what extent “social inflation” applies across various types of cases.  

• Practice areas differ wildly in terms of changes in damage awards. Claim values for some litigation specialties, such as patent infringement and trade secrets, have grown substantially. Awards for claims rooted in environmental statutes, for example, have decreased in both volume and value. 

• The average value of damages awarded in claimants’ jury verdicts rose sharply from 2020 through 2022 compared to the 2015-2019 period. Since 2022, the average value of plaintiffs’ verdicts has only increased more rapidly. 

Newest Litigation Report 

Lex Machina is proud to introduce this newest iteration of our Litigation Report series, made possible by our recently expanded analytics collection that now includes detailed case-outcome information for more than 3.7 million civil cases in federal district courts. 

In October 2024, Lex Machina expanded our Legal Analytics® platform to include comprehensive case data and insights for findings, remedies, and damages on every commercially relevant civil case in federal district courts. Companies and law firms using Lex Machina can now access valuable litigation data for damage awards and other key outcome details across more than 500,000 additional cases than were previously covered. This exclusive intelligence equips legal and insurance professionals with a more comprehensive aerial view of the litigation landscape for the cases that matter to them. 

New outcome analytics in Lex Machina available since the October 2024 “Full Federal” launch include comprehensive insights from lawsuits in which a party asserted a claim pertaining to: 

• Admiralty / Maritime law matters 

• Administrative Procedures Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. 701, or a request for review or appeal of a federal agency decision 

• Forfeiture / Penalty: Cases in which a property owner or claim defendant was found to be in violation of federal law, resulting in property forfeiture or penalty to the federal government. (This also includes claims against the federal government to reclaim forfeited property.) 

• Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 

• Immigration matters, and 

• Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). 

Lex Machina for Litigation Success

Our Legal Analytics platform equips litigation professionals to win more cases and win more business. From precise timing metrics that inform legal budgeting to trends among top law firms and leading judges, Lex Machina provides customized insights that supplement traditional research and accumulated experience. These insights help lawyers prospect for clients, navigate motion and trial strategies, and negotiate settlements intelligently, ultimately giving firms a competitive edge in litigation. 

Request your complimentary, personalized demonstration today at LexisNexis.com/LexMachina