Today we’re beginning a multi-part post, emphasizing how the insurance industry has fared over the past thirty years at the Illinois Supreme Court. Later this week, we’ll begin a similar series over at the California Supreme Court Review.

First, we report the most basic number of all – insurer parties’ won-lost record at the Supreme Court each year from 1990 to 1999. For the decade, insurers batted slightly over .500, winning twenty-two cases and losing nineteen. The insurers’ best year was 1992, when they won five of eight, followed by 1997, when they were 4-3. Insurers won three cases in 1993 and 1995 – they were 3-1 both years – and in 1998, when they were 3-2.

Next, we split the data up according to which party won below. In Table 1442, we review the year by year numbers in cases where the insurer was the winning party below. This shows that in the nineties, insurers had a rough time trying to defend wins from the Appellate Court, winning five while losing ten. Insurers successfully defended two wins in only one year of the decade, 1992 (and even then, they lost three for the year).

Next, we review the numbers where the Court was reviewing an insurer’s loss from the Appellate Court. Insurers succeeded in obtaining reversal in seventeen of those cases, losing only nine. In 1992 and 1993, insurers successfully flipped five of five losses, and in 1995 and 1996, they flipped four in a row.

Join us back here tomorrow as we review the data for the next decade.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Rennett Stowe (no changes).