Miami, United States, March 22, 2017 (Newswire.com) - Lawsuits are part of the cost of doing business for America’s largest corporations. The nation’s civil courts are where citizens are empowered to meet these corporations on equal terms to seek redress when something goes wrong. Unfortunately, there will always be opportunists in any system. Consider the case of Rodolfo Valaderes, who was mistaken by a Bank of America teller for a bank robber whose photograph had been distributed that day to the branch’s employees. After she called the police, the innocent Valaderes was badly beaten by the police while the bank’s customers looked on. Sounds like a sure-fire lawsuit against the local police department right?
Not so fast.
Lawsuits are a major and sometimes under-examined variable in modern business. We've found that companies that lose more suits than they win tend to be outperformed on the market by competitors who excel in the courtroom.
Toby Unwin, CIO, Premonition
Three years later, Valaderes walked out of court with a $3.3 million settlement… against Bank of America. Since the financial crisis of 2008, America’s banking industry has weathered a series of costly lawsuits as citizens and their attorneys seek to assign blame for the disaster. Thanks to a new survey released by Premonition Analytics, for the first time the industry and the public have access to hard statistics about which banks have been sued most frequently, how long their cases have taken to resolve and even each bank’s “winning” percentage.
| Name | Cases | Days | Win % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Discover | 13928 | 127 | 56 |
| Capital One | 9472 | 114 | 57 |
| Deutsche Bank | 2342 | 191 | 69 |
| Citibank | 1133 | 117 | 45 |
| Huntington | 978 | 116 | 67 |
| HSBC | 939 | 206 | 72 |
| Barclays | 739 | 111 | 53 |
| First National Bank of Omaha | 414 | 109 | 64 |
| Branch Banking and Trust Company | 404 | 129 | 60 |
| Citizens | 324 | 410 | 75 |
| Fifth Third | 283 | 132 | 63 |
| Bank of America | 200 | 267 | 57 |
Even by the standards of America’s most-sued banks, Discover has been absolutely pounded, having been sued over 32% more than runner-up Capital One, spending a mind-boggling 1,768,856 cumulative days in litigation over the past two years. Discover’s win percentage also lags behind most of its competitors at a mere 56%, though this beats the 45% posted by Citibank. HSBC and Citizens Bank by comparison posted relatively sterling rates, winning over 70% of their cases.
Premonition Analytics claims to do for corporate litigation what data analytics has done in areas from market research to sociology to pro sports: revolutionize the field. Characterized on Premonition’s website as “a very, very unfair advantage in litigation,” the company’s proprietary AI turns the power of granular data capture on the justice system. The company claims its insights can tell clients which lawyers perform best in front of individual judges, including the average settlements in their cases. The implications are much vaster than its effect on the result of an individual case.
“Consider the effect BP’s oil spill and the subsequent suits against the company had on their stock,” says Premonition Co-Founder Toby Unwin. “Lawsuits are a major and sometimes under-examined variable in modern business. We’ve found that companies that lose more suits than they win tend to be outperformed on the market by competitors who excel in the courtroom.” If Premonition’s claim that its software allows clients to gain a predictive advantage in choosing their legal counsel holds up, it could have major ramifications at every level of the business world.
Earlier this year Premonition released its win rate data for the auto industry, and in the near future they plan on issuing on similar findings in a slew of other industries.
“Choice of counsel affects 30.7% of the average case outcome,” claims Premonition Business Development Director Nathan Huber. “Analytics allows companies to deploy their litigation resources most effectively, putting the right lawyer in front of the right judge. It’s the opportunity to turn a 50/50 litigation portfolio into an 80/20.”
Source: Premonition
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