Litigation in Interior Design: Examining United States Appellate Court Cases in Professional Practice

Abstract

Objective To increase knowledge of litigation in interior design professional practice, this study examined the relationship among four time periods occurring between 1969–96 and five variables: (a) occurrence of appellate–level lawsuits; (b) number of designer–defendants and designer–plaintiffs; (c) legal bases of lawsuits; (d) dollar value of amounts sought by litigants; and (e) dollar value of amounts awarded to litigants. A profile of allegations in the appellate–level lawsuits also was completed. Research Design A content analysis of litigation abstracts was completed for 137 appellate–level lawsuits using Westlawr̀, a proprietary on–line database for legal research of court abstracts in the United States. An interdisciplinary team composed of interior designers and an attorney undertook the research. Analysis Analysis of variance, including the Kruskal–Wallis test of medians, and chi–square were calculated to determine levels of probability for five hypotheses. Statistical analyses of the data included rankings of allegations in the lawsuits. Key Findings Appellate–level lawsuits were significantly different among the four time periods for (a) number of lawsuits and (b) legal bases. The time periods were nearing significant difference for dollar amounts awarded to litigants. No significant differences were shown for frequencies of designer–plaintiffs and designer–defendants or for dollar amounts sought by the appellate courts. The majority of allegations focused on disputes regarding payments for merchandise and design services. Conclusion The results suggest that over the length of a professional career, a designer is more likely to be a plaintiff in a lawsuit than a defendant and that the great majority of litigated disputes will focus on contractual issues rather than allegations of tortuous acts, such as professional negligence. The dollar amounts involved in litigation are near minimums for appellate court cases.

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