Pretrial Publicity and Civil Cases: A Two-Way Street?

Published pretrial publicity (PTP) research has been conducted almost exclusively with criminal cases and has focused on PTP that is detrimental to the defense. The current research examined the effects of PTP in a civil case to determine if PTP can have a biasing effect against either the defendant...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Law and human behavior 2002-02, Vol.26 (1), p.3-17
Main Authors: Bornstein, Brian H, Whisenhunt, Brooke L, Nemeth, Robert J, Dunaway, Deborah L
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adjudication
Adult
Chemical Industry - legislation & jurisprudence
Civil actions
Civil Law
Civil Rights - legislation & jurisprudence
Civil trials
Criminals
Decision making
Defendants
Evidence
Experimentation
Experiments
Female
Hazardous Waste - legislation & jurisprudence
Human
Human behavior
Humans
Impeachment
Information
Juries
Jurors
Ketamine - toxicity
Law
Legal Processes
Liability
Liability, Legal
Litigation
Male
Mass Media
Newspapers as Topic - legislation & jurisprudence
Official misconduct
Ovarian Neoplasms - chemically induced
Plaintiffs
Prejudice
Products liability
Public Opinion
Publicity
Response Bias
Scandals
Studies
Trials
Verdicts
Citations: Items that cite this one
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Summary:Published pretrial publicity (PTP) research has been conducted almost exclusively with criminal cases and has focused on PTP that is detrimental to the defense. The current research examined the effects of PTP in a civil case to determine if PTP can have a biasing effect against either the defendant or the plaintiff in civil litigation. In Experiment 1, participants exposed to PTP biased against the defendant were more likely to reach a liable verdict than participants who read a control article or PTP biased against the plaintiff. Experiment 2 demonstrated that a judicial admonition did not reduce the biasing effect of PTP about a civil defendant. However, participants given the admonition both before and after the trial evidence viewed the defendant as less culpable than participants given the admonition after the trial only or not at all. The implications for the legal system are discussed.
ISSN:0147-7307
1573-661X
DOI:10.1023/A:1013825124011