Balance Updates 2 - Michigan 2024 BEJJKP

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Court Clog
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Court clog is declining, but it’s on the brink---technology will pioneer a post-COVID transition, but only if courts maintain breathing room.
Reuters ’24 [Thomson Reuters; March 7; News and information services company, citing the second annual State of the Courts report, which included a survey of over 200 judges; Thomson Reuters, “State of the Courts Report 2024: Worries over caseloads and backlogs recede as GenAI enters the chat,” https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/blog/state-of-the-courts-report-2024-worries-over-caseloads-and-backlogs-recede-as-genai-enters-the-chat/]
Embracing tech: Courts overcome challenges and look ahead
Yet, while these concerns were still reflected in our latest survey, many of these challenges have receded somewhat, making room in many respondents’ minds for a clearer path toward more positive outcomes. For example, while increasing caseloads continue to be the biggest change that respondents said they had experienced in the past two years, with 40% of respondents citing this change, that was down from 45% in our previous survey.
Indeed, all other aspects of work are also less likely to have increased since our previous survey, with increased case delays being cited by 27% of respondents, compared to 45% in 2022; and increased courts backlogs cited by 25%, compared to 44% previously.
And even though more than half of respondents (56%) said they expect to experience staffing shortages in the coming 12 months, that was down from the past 12 months when almost two-thirds (64%) reported staffing shortages.
Further, it seems that courts and their workers are enjoying broader engagement with technology solutions, especially around such critical areas as evidence collection and digital storage, and certain case-material sharing and management tools are seeing more acceptance across the board.
In fact, more than one-third (35%) of respondents say they now use digital evidence management systems — up from 27% in the last survey. More interestingly, nearly three-fifths (58%) of those who say they are not using a digital evidence management system think that having one would be at least somewhat beneficial for their operations.
It’s as if both the easing of the pandemic-induced stasis in the courts and the slow, albeit steady movement toward new technology solutions to improve court operations have melded with the great expectations of GenAI to make today’s judges and court professionals more conscious of their opportunities amid the frenetic pace of work. Indeed, they may even be daring enough to envision a future in which worries about overwork, delays, and staffing shortages are finally moved to the backburner.
All this has coalesced to give our survey respondents something akin to breathing room, or at least, a chance to take steps to better manage the challenges they continue to face — more often now, through the use of new technology solutions.
As judges and court professionals look to 2024 and beyond, they seem to be doing so without one eye steadily held in the pandemic-era rearview mirror, and instead are looking forward, moving to take advantage of whatever benefits and efficiencies today’s new technologies can offer.
Cases are declining, have been for years, AND most overstretch is concentrated in state courts.
Browning ’23 [Jack; October 16; Content Marketing Manager for One Legal, citing data from the American Bar Association; One Legal, “Top court filing statistics from around the country,” https://www.onelegal.com/blog/top-court-filing-statistics-united-states/]
Where are most cases filed?
The Court Statistics Project reports that more than 95% of U.S. cases are filed in state courts. In 2021, there were an estimated 63 million cases filed in state trial courts. State appellate courts had 131,000 appeals filed.
What are the court stats for the federal courts?
U.S. Supreme Court Justices decide which cases they will hear, and it’s roughly 80 each year. They decide on another 50 without hearing arguments. The cases they choose usually address constitutional issues or federal law. The Supreme Court gets about 7,000 requests to hear cases per year, so there are many cases that don’t get heard.
Statistics for 2022 found that U.S. Courts of Appeals filings totaled 42,900 — a decrease of 24% since 2013. Civil cases filed were recorded at 309,102, an increase of 14% over 2013.
Research also shows that criminal cases filed were at 71,111, a reduction of 23% since 2013. This is largely because of a reduction in appeals related to drug offenses (down 27%), immigration offenses (down 27%), and property offenses (down 14%). Roughly 76% of criminal appeals involved four offense categories: drugs, immigration, firearms and explosives, and property offenses (including fraud).
Bankruptcy court stats
In 2022, bankruptcy courts registered 383,810 new case filings, which marked a 12% decrease compared to the previous year and a substantial 51% reduction from the numbers recorded in fiscal year 2019. Among the 90 bankruptcy courts, 79 experienced a drop in the number of petitions filed during this year.
Consumer petitions, which predominantly encompass non-business filings and make up roughly 97% of all bankruptcy petitions, saw an 11% decrease, totaling 370,685. On the other hand, business petitions dropped by 19%, resulting in 13,125 cases.
Breaking down the types of bankruptcy filings, those submitted under Chapter 7 experienced a significant 26% reduction, while Chapter 11 filings decreased by 15%. In contrast, petitions filed under Chapter 13 showed a notable increase, rising by 27%.
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court saw a decline in the total number of cases filed, dropping by 8% from 5,307 filings in the 2020 Term to 4,900 filings in the 2021 Term.
This decrease also affected the in forma pauperis docket, which decreased by 5%, with 3,477 filings in the 2020 Term compared to 3,288 filings in the 2021 Term. In the paid docket, there was a more substantial drop, with a 12% decrease from 1,830 filings in the 2020 Term to 1,612 filings in the 2021 Term.
During the 2021 Term, the Court heard arguments in 70 cases and disposed of 63 cases through 58 signed opinions. This represents a slight reduction compared to the 2020 Term, when 72 cases were argued, and 69 were disposed of through 55 signed opinions.
Additionally, in the 2021 Term, the Court issued seven per curiam decisions in argued cases.
Circuit Courts of Appeals
When looking at some of the individual Circuits, we see that filings rose by 31 appeals in the Ninth Circuit (up 7%). Filings fell by nine appeals (down 14%) in the First Circuit, by seven appeals (down 12%) in the Tenth Circuit, down by five appeals (down 9%) in the Sixth Circuit, and by one appeal (down 3%) in the Eighth.
However, filings in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rose 11%.
The largest numeric increase was in appeals arising from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which jumped by 134 appeals to 680 (up 25%). These 2016-17 numbers show the first time this court surpassed appeals arising from the U.S. District Courts.
United States District Courts
In 2022, the Federal District Courts recorded 274,771 civil cases, marking a 20% decrease compared to the previous year. A significant portion of these filings was linked to a multidistrict litigation (MDL) regarding earplug product liability, which was mostly centered in the Northern District of Florida.
This MDL alone accounted for 83,654 filings in 2021 and 34,410 filings in fiscal year 2022. Excluding the MDL cases, the total number of civil case filings dropped by 8% to 240,361, representing a 19% decrease from fiscal year 2019.
Cases involving diversity of citizenship (disputes between citizens of different states) experienced a 37% reduction, totaling 105,212. Personal injury cases dropped by 48%, amounting to 70,933, primarily due to the inclusion of MDL cases within these categories.
Federal question cases, which involve actions under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States where the United States is not a party, decreased by 3%, resulting in 131,131 cases.
Cases in which the United States was the defendant decreased by 9% to 35,589, with a significant reduction in Social Security filings, down 31% to 13,370.
Prisoner petition filings also declined for the second consecutive year, decreasing by 10% to 7,811. Cases in which the United States acted as the plaintiff decreased by 13% to 2,839.
On the criminal side, the federal district courts registered 68,315 criminal defendant filings in 2022, marking an 8% decrease from the prior year and a 26% decrease from the fiscal year 2019.
The most significant categories of criminal defendant filings were drug offenses, which decreased by 15% to 19,589, and immigration offenses, which decreased by 1% to 19,148.
More court statistics on judicial caseload for the U.S. Court of Appeals
In 2022, there was a notable 7% reduction in case filings across the 12 regional U.S. Courts of Appeals, resulting in a total of 42,900 appeals, marking a decline of 3,265 appeals.
This decrease primarily stemmed from lower numbers of appeals related to administrative agency decisions, original proceedings, miscellaneous applications, civil appeals, and bankruptcy appeals, which collectively outweighed an uptick in criminal appeals.
Civil appeals saw a decrease of 939 cases, totaling 22,794 appeals. Within this category, prisoner petitions exhibited an 11% drop, while civil appeals not initiated by prisoners increased by 2%.
In contrast, there was a 5% rise in criminal appeals, reaching a total of 10,355 appeals. This increase was primarily attributed to a 19% surge in appeals related to firearms and explosives offenses and a substantial 50% increase in appeals related to immigration offenses.
Notably, a significant portion of criminal appeals — around 75% — involved four main offense categories, which included drugs, firearms and explosives, property offenses (including fraud), and sex offenses.
Appeals of administrative agency decisions also witnessed a decline, specifically a 24% reduction down to 5,695 appeals. This decrease was mainly due to fewer appeals challenging decisions made by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), which accounted for 87% of all administrative agency appeals and constituted the largest category of such appeals in every circuit except the DC Circuit.
Original proceedings and miscellaneous applications experienced a collective decrease of 23%, resulting in 3,396 cases.
This reduction was largely influenced by a substantial 34% decline in original proceedings related to second or successive motions for writs of habeas corpus, resulting in 910 fewer proceedings.
Notably, approximately 60% of original proceedings were associated with second or successive motions for writs of habeas corpus, while 37% were related to writs of mandamus.
Additionally, out of the 440 miscellaneous applications reported, motions for class actions comprised 43% of the total.
Lastly, there was a 5% decline in bankruptcy appeals, with a total of 660 cases filed in this category.
Issue-specific uniqueness---roughly 3000 lawsuits is well below the threshold for patent flood.
Connors ‘9 [John; July 2009; Patent attorney and founder of Connors & Associates, a professional law corporation, emeritus member of the Association of Corporate Patent Counsel; Orange County Lawyer, “Spotlight on Intellectual Property Law: The Patent Reform Humbug,” vol. 51]
The federal courts recognize that "invalid" patents exist, and dispose of these based on the evidence--quickly sometimes by summary judgment if there is no material fact in dispute. If a patent owner knowingly attempts to enforce an invalid patent, the court will impose penalties. The courts, however, do not recognize "bad" patents, which are creations of lobbyists. Since only about 3000 patent lawsuits are filed annually (only a couple hundred or so going to trial each year), there isn't any "torrent" of patent litigation clogging the federal courts. In fact, the federal courts are constantly modifying our patent system so that it is fair to all litigants as several recent cases attest, including the 2007 Supreme Court decision making the non-obvious test more difficult to pass. (KSR International vs. Teleflex 550 U. S. 398.)
We’re still below 3000---litigation is contained.
Davis ’24 [Ryan; February 7; Editor at Law360, citing a study from Lex Machina, a legal analytics company; Law360, “New Patent Suits Fall to Lowest Level In Over A Decade,” https://www.law360.com/articles/1793092]
There were fewer patent suits filed in 2023 than in any year for over a decade, a drop that attorneys attribute to wariness among some patent litigants due to funding disclosure rules in one prominent patent venue and changes in how cases are assigned to judges in another.
A total of 3,111 patent lawsuits were brought in U.S. district courts last year, a 19% drop from the 3,839 in 2022 and the fewest in any year since 2010, according to a new report from Lex Machina. From 2017 to 2022, between 3,500 and 4,000 suits were filed each year.
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Lex Machina said the drop appears to be tied to fewer suits being brought by what the legal analytics company describes as "high-volume plaintiffs," or those that file at least 10 patent cases within a 365-day period.
Cases filed by such companies fell 45% between 2022 and 2023, the report found. When high-volume plaintiffs are excluded, the number of new suits has held steady at around 2,200 per year between 2018 and 2023, according to Lex Machina.
When the relatively few companies that file numerous patent suits slow down, it can have a notable impact on overall filing data, so "I think the issue is more micro than it is macro," said Patrick Muffo of Polsinelli PC.
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Filings are down AND the pace of change is gradual.
NCSC ’24 [National Center for State Courts; March 6; Independent non-profit organization that serves as an authoritative source for judicial resources and has compiled and released statistics on the court for over fifty years; National Center for State Courts, “Court Statistics Project releases trial court caseload trends,” https://www.ncsc.org/newsroom/at-the-center/2024/court-statistics-project-releases-trial-court-caseload-trends]
During 2022, state courts handled 64.6 million incoming cases, which is a 2% increase over the previous year. However, when compared to the total number of cases in 2019 (83.2 million), there was a decline of 18.7 million cases.
“While there has been a gradual recovery from the unprecedented decline in state court filings since 2019, some case types, such as delinquency and traffic, remain well below the pre-pandemic caseload levels,” said Nicole Waters, NCSC’s Director of Research and Design.
The CSP is a joint project of NCSC and the Conference of State Court Administrators that uses comparable data sourced directly from state courts to publish national trends and analyze caseload statistics, providing useful insights that inform policy, budgetary, and court management decisions.
Between 2021 and 2022, there was an across-the-board increase in incoming filings for all major case types, including civil (5%), criminal (2%), domestic relations (2%), and traffic (1%).
Traffic Cases Fall off a Cliff
Traffic and local ordinance cases make up nearly half (30.3 million) of all incoming cases to state courts. While the Federal Highway Administration reports that Americans are driving as much as they did before the pandemic, incoming cases are down 29% from 2019 filings.
Waters stated that the traffic trend is so striking that starting next month, CSP will issue a series of findings that take a deeper dive into traffic trends to uncover the “drivers” behind this trend. CSP will also explore anticipated impacts and ways courts can respond to potential caseload reductions.
Juvenile cases experienced a decline in incoming cases from 2020 to 2021 but showed a 7% increase in 2022, mainly due to an increase in incoming delinquency cases. The number of delinquency filings in 2022 was still down by 23% compared to 2019.
There was an increase in civil cases related to real property, contracts, civil appeals, mental health, and probate/estate matters. Contract disputes comprised 46% of civil cases. Contract cases typically include employment disputes, landlord/tenant disputes, mortgage foreclosure, and debt collection.
Criminal cases slightly increased in 2022, showing a 2% rise from 2021. However, they are still down by 14% from 2019. Total estimated incoming criminal cases was 15.6 million in 2022. Of these, 11.5 million were reported as misdemeanor cases. This is an increase of 1% from 2021 and a 16% drop from 2019. Meanwhile, felony cases showed a 4% decrease from 2021, with 2.9 million cases reported.
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Underlying data proves overall patent litigation is plummeting.
Carlson ’24 [Julie; May 6; Director of Economic Strategy at Qualcomm, former advisor to FTC Chairman Joseph Simons and Commissioner William Kovacic, former Professor of Economics at Trinity University, Ph.D. in Economics from Michigan State University; IP Watchdog, “New Data Show There Is a Problem with the U.S. Patent System—But It’s Not Patent Trolls,” https://ipwatchdog.com/2024/05/06/new-data-show-problem-us-patent-system-not-patent-trolls/id=176149/]
If the headlines are to be believed, every aspect of American life, from farming to football, is under threat due to excessive patent litigation. While these anecdotes may seem compelling, it is important to look at the underlying data before drawing any conclusions about the state of the U.S. patent system. As an economist and one of the authors of the Federal Trade Commission’s study of patent assertion entities (PAEs), I understand the value data can bring to patent policy debates, and have also seen firsthand the damage evidence-free policymaking has on America’s innovation ecosystem. On World IP Day, Marcum, LLP, a leading accounting and advisory firm, released a report that examines 20 years of patent infringement decisions at U.S. district courts. A careful reading of their report reveals that not only is patent litigation not excessive, but patent owners struggle to enforce their patents against infringers. The report shows that overall patent litigation is declining, injunction grants are low, and litigation by non-practicing entities (NPEs) is not pervasive.
Patent Litigation Is Declining
The first graph in the report clearly dispels the notion that patent litigation is excessive. It shows the trends over time in the number of patent grants and the number of patent infringement complaints filed in U.S. district courts. As seen in the graph, there is a sharp increase in the number of complaints filed after 2011 due to the anti-joinder provisions of the America Invents Act (AIA). As astute observers of the U.S. patent system understand, this increase in complaints does not represent new disputes but merely a separation of defendants into individual lawsuits thereby mechanically increasing the number of complaints. Therefore, the decline in complaints observed after 2013 is more impressive than it appears as the decline would have been even greater were it not for the anti-joinder provision. Even still, complaints are only about a third higher than they were in the period leading up to the AIA. Furthermore, patent infringement complaints as a share of granted patents is low and is also declining. Marcum reports this share averaged 1.7% from 2013 to 2017 and is less than 1% today.
Injunction Grants Are Low
The Marcum report provides further evidence of the pernicious effect the U.S. Supreme Court’s eBay decision has had on the ability of patent owners to enforce the exclusionary right embodied in their patent. Prior research has shown that patent owners are less l

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