U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey
Public, sourced statistics for this district — reviewed 2026-09-17. Every figure below carries the U.S. Courts source and reporting period it was pulled from.
- 01Personal injury / product liability matters made up 55.4% of the district's civil docket in the 12 months ending September 30, 2025 (11,172 of 20,159 civil filings) — roughly 3.8x the 14.6% national rate.
- 02With 17 authorized judgeships carrying 82,874 pending civil cases as of the period reported, the district averages roughly 4,875 pending civil matters per judgeship.
- 03New Jersey's concentration of pharmaceutical and medical-device manufacturers gives this district a significant product-liability caseload tied to the life-sciences industry.
What drives case duration in D.N.J.?
The reported median time from filing to civil disposition in D.N.J. is 8.1 months, faster than the 15.6-month national median. 52,402 pending civil cases — 57.0% of the district's civil docket — have been pending over three years, above the 28.3% national rate.
Resolution timing in D.N.J. is a function of docket pressure relative to the district's authorized bench. D.N.J. carries 82,874 pending civil cases against 17 authorized judgeships, or roughly 4,875 pending civil matters per judgeship. For underwriting purposes, the aged-inventory share (cases pending over three years) is generally a better forward-looking duration signal than the median alone, since it captures the tail risk a median can mask.
How does docket composition in D.N.J. shape resolution risk?
Personal injury / product liability is overrepresented on the docket at 55.4% of civil filings versus a 14.6% national share. Docket composition shapes resolution path because different case types carry structurally different settlement timing, dispositive-motion practice, and trial exposure.
New Jersey's concentration of pharmaceutical and medical-device manufacturers gives this district a significant product-liability caseload tied to the life-sciences industry. A district's nature-of-suit mix is a durable structural signal, not a one-time artifact — it reflects the regional economy, the population served, and any specialty tracks the court has built around a case type. In D.N.J., that concentration in personal injury / product liability matters means underwriting assumptions calibrated on a generic national civil docket will misprice duration and resolution-path risk for cases filed here; the relevant comparison set is the district's own historical resolution pattern for that case type, not the national average.
What should funders and counsel underwrite for specifically in D.N.J.?
The reported median time from filing to civil trial is 62.4 months, slower than the 34.8-month national figure. Circuit precedent runs through the Third Circuit, and this district's disclosure practice for non-party financial interests is a separate underwriting input from the merits timeline.
D.N.J. Local Civil Rule 7.1.1 requires parties to disclose, without a court order, the existence of any non-party that has a right to receive compensation contingent on the case's outcome — the most explicit district-wide third-party litigation funding disclosure rule in the federal system. Combined with the district's own disposition and aged-inventory statistics above, these are the three inputs — timeline, docket composition, and disclosure exposure — that a portfolio-level underwriting process should hold as district-specific rather than assume from a national baseline. Criterica Intelligence's duration and resolution models calibrate to exactly this level of jurisdiction-specific detail rather than a single national prior.
D.N.J. has 17 authorized district judgeships as of the 12-month period ending September 30, 2025, per U.S. Courts Federal Court Management Statistics.
The reported median is 8.1 months for the 12-month period ending September 30, 2025, faster than the 15.6-month national median for U.S. district courts.
D.N.J. Local Civil Rule 7.1.1 requires parties to disclose, without a court order, the existence of any non-party that has a right to receive compensation contingent on the case's outcome — the most explicit district-wide third-party litigation funding disclosure rule in the federal system.
Personal injury / product liability matters were the most overrepresented category on the civil docket, at 55.4% of filings (11,172 of 20,159) in the 12 months ending September 30, 2025, versus a 14.6% national share.
- U.S. Courts, Federal Court Management Statistics — U.S. District Courts, District Profiles (12-Month Periods Ending September 30, 2020 Through 2025), 12-month period ending September 30, 2025.
- U.S. Courts, Table C-1 — U.S. District Courts, Civil Cases Commenced, Terminated, and Pending, 12-month period ending March 31, 2025.
- 28 U.S.C. §§ 81–131 (district and division designations).
The statistics above are drawn from the sources cited — historical figures reported by the U.S. Courts, not projections. They describe this district's docket-level trends, not the likely outcome or duration of any individual case, and are not a Criterica Intelligence platform statistic.
See how Criterica Intelligence calibrates duration and resolution-path models to D.N.J. specifically.
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