Jury awards down in US for third year running

The US National Law Journal has reported that the total amount awarded by juries last year in the largest cases in the US declined for the third consecutive year. Based on analysis of the VerdictSearch Top 100, a ranking of the largest jury verdicts in 2005, the NLJ reveals that juries awarded just $8.2bn in compensatory and punitive damages in these cases last year, the lowest total since the newspaper began tracking these verdicts in 2001 and a decline of 28% from last year’s total.