LITIGATION OVERDONE, OVERBLOWN, AND OVERWROUGHT: A MIXED METHODS STUDY OF CIVIL LITIGANTS by CHRISTOPHER ADAM COFFEY JENNIFER COX, CHAIR STANLEY L. BRODSKY, CO-CHAIR ANSLEY T. GILPIN BRONWEN LICHTENSTEIN THEODORE S. TOMENY A DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Psychology In the Graduate School of The University of Alabama TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA 2019 Copyright Christopher Adam Coffey 2019 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT Hyperlitigious individuals, referred to by legal professionals as “vexatious” and mental health professionals as “querulous,” are individuals who make excessive and egregious use of the legal system for a primarily non-legal purpose. These individuals and their legal activity have been conceptualized and managed differently, though scholars generally agree this type of behavior is burdensome for all parties involved. Much of what is currently known about hyperlitigious individuals has come from conceptual articles and small studies in which legal and psychological professionals have offered hypotheses about them and the factors that motivate them to behave as they do. However, no previous study gathered data directly from a United States based sample. To address the gaps in the professional literature, this study employed a mixed-methods design that 1) quantitatively examined differences between hyperlitigious individuals and “typical” litigants regarding empirically-relevant psychological variables and 2) qualitatively explored litigants’ perceptions of their legal activity and its impact on themselves and others. Differences were observed between hyperlitigious and “typical” litigants in terms of trait agreeableness and need for cognition. Qualitative themes provided insight into cognitive, affective, and behavioral traits common in this population, motivations for persistent litigation, and numerous perceived costs of this behavior. Taken together, findings suggested this population may experience disagreements and motivated to act by their emotional reactions to conflict rather than the legal merits of the situation. Findings also revealed several negative social consequences (i.e. stigma) of the “vexatious litigant” label. Keywords: hyperlitigious behavior, personality, motivations, perceived impacts, stigma ii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my mother and grandmother. It has been an immense privilege to be raised by you and guided by each of your examples throughout my life. iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS APA American Psychiatric Association ACLS Attitudes Toward Civil Litigation Scale BFI Big Five Inventory DOG Dogmatism Scale DSM-5 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders- 5th edition FFM Five Factor Model of Personality ICD-10 International Classification of Diseases-10th edition IPA Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis IRB Institutional Review Board M Mean: The sum of a group of numbers divided by the number of observations n Sample size of a group NFC Need for Cognition NCS Need for Cognition Scale p Probability associated with the occurrence under the null hypothesis of a value extreme as or more extreme than the other observed value PTSD Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder r Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient SD Standard deviation: Value of variation from the mean t T Statistic: Value determining whether sample means differ iv U Mann-Whitney U statistic: Value determining whether two scores were obtained from the same sample or distribution v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank my mentors, Dr. Stan Brodsky and Dr. Jenni Cox, for their invaluable guidance, not just on this project, but throughout my time at the University of Alabama. I will always be grateful that I had the opportunity to learn from you both. I would also like to thank Drs. Ansley Gilpin, Bronwen Lichtenstein, and Ted Tomeny, for their thoughtful contributions to this project. Without all of you, this project would not have been possible. Finally, I would like to thank my friends and colleagues at the University of Alabama for their constant encouragement and support. It was a privilege to learn, laugh, and grow with you over the past five years. vi CONTENTS ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................... ii DEDICATION ................................................................................................ iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS ........................................... iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................ vi LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................ viii LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................... ix CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 2. METHODOLOGY ................................................................ 20 CHAPTER 3. RESULTS ............................................................................... 34 CHAPTER 4. DISCUSSION ........................................................................ 53 REFERENCES ............................................................................................. 71 APPENDICES .............................................................................................. 77 vii LIST OF TABLES 1. Demographic Characteristics of Matched Sample ...................................................................77 2. Demographic Characteristics of MTurk Comparison Sample .................................................80 3. Study Procedures .....................................................................................................................83 4. Summary of Qualitative Findings ............................................................................................85 viii LIST OF FIGURES 1. Concurrent mixed-methods study design ...............................................................................13 ix CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The Constitution of the United States grants American citizens initial access to the courts when they believe another party has wronged them (Manwell, 1966). Constitutional provisions are necessary to ensure that citizens have the opportunity to utilize the court system to protect or exercise their legal rights without infringing upon the rights of others. Unfortunately, some individuals take advantage of this open-door policy and choose to utilize the legal system for a primarily non-legal purpose, resulting in delays at multiple levels of the judicial process. As a salient example, a group that displays this type of behavior is a group of litigants who repeatedly file frivolous lawsuits that harass other parties and drain resources from already overcrowded legal system (Mullen & Lester, 2006). These “hyperlitigious” individuals have been labeled and described differently by scholars across time, place, and profession, though most researchers and practitioners acknowledge this type of activity is burdensome for the litigants, their targets, and the legal systems in which they file their claims (Coffey, Brodsky, & Sams, 2017; Mullen & Lester, 2006). Much of what is currently known about hyperlitigious individuals has come from conceptual articles and small studies in which legal and psychological professionals have offered hypotheses about them and the factors that motivate them to behave as they do. However, no previous study has examined how members of this group perceive their own behavior or assess its impact on themselves and others. This dissertation will address gaps in knowledge by 1 collecting data from a sample of these litigants living in the United States about their hyperlitigiosity and its impact on themselves, others, and the legal systems in which they choose to act. This dissertation introduces and defines the concept of hyperlitigiosity and discusses interpersonal and systemic dysfunction often associated with this pattern of behavior. The scant psychological literature on this topic is also reviewed and select media accounts are presented to illustrate the need for further research on these individuals and their behaviors in the United States. Finally, a mixed-methods investigation of this phenomenon is proposed that 1) examines differences between hyperlitigious individuals and other litigants with regard to empirically relevant psychological variables and 2) explores these litigants’ perceptions of their hyperlitigiosity and the life stressors associated with these persistent, yet often unsuccessful, legal pursuits. This approach may provide researchers and practitioners with a more comprehensive understanding of what these individuals are like, how they view their legal experiences, and why they behave differently than other litigants. Who are Hyperlitigious Individuals? The term “hyperlitigious” was proposed as a non-pejorative descriptor of individuals who engage in excessive and egregious legal activity primarily for non-legal purposes. This word was formed by joining the prefix “hyper-,” meaning over, and the root word “litigious,” meaning “prone to engage in lawsuits.” While other labels have been used to describe these individuals and their behaviors over time and across disciplines (e.g. “vexatious litigant,” “paranoid querulant”), the present study will primarily use the label hyperlitigious because it avoids the negative