A short blurb in the WSJ provides the news below. Interestingly, this isn't page one news, but Section D, page 2, lower corner of the paper.
Since the article is short, here you go (in part):
Product liability, medical malpractice, and other tort trials concluded in the U.S. federal court fell by nearly 80% from 1985 to 2003, according to a new Justice Department study. The study's jump off point can be found on the DOJ site by clicking here. In 2003 there were a total of less than 800 trials in USDCTs. That compares to 3,600 in 1985.
The report from the DOJ in PDF format can be found here. There is also a nifty excel spreadsheet that breaks down each year. It's in a zip file, self extracting.
The chart to the right is from the PDF of the materials on the DOJ web site.
