Having explored the arguments about the "insurance crisis" Robert Hayden concluded that "[m]uch of the rhetoric of the litigation explosion [hinged] on anecdotes, presented as true stories, which portray the population as litigious and the courts as either blind or stupid in their failure to stop improper suits. These ‘horror stories’ [were] promulgated by the insurance industry and some business interests, as part of a campaign to reform the civil justice system." The effectiveness on the campaign depended on its ability to draw on "established themes in American culture," particularly its "litigiousness."

"The liability insurance crisis thus seems to be a case where an elite discourse has become the sensibility of the common person: common sense which indicates hegemony. The process of shaping such common sense involves the utilization of the political power inherent in shared cultural themes to achieve specific goals, which at the same time restates the cultural system. It is not necessarily the case that the cultural themes being utilized fit only the course of action advocated, but once that course has been established, other possible interpretations are nearly ruled out. A hegemonic schema is one that is not only dominant, but that has also become, for most if not all members of the society, the only conceivable position. This aspect of hegemony is exemplified by the liability insurance anecdotes, in the transformation of real legal cases into anecdotes illustrating the flaws of the courts. Judging from the more full information presented by the debunkers of the anecdotes, in each case it was reasonable to see the matter as the jury did, as involving a plaintiff seriously injured by the negligent action of the defendant. Yet each anecdote instead portrays a blameless defendant and an unworthy plaintiff, and it is this second version that is transmitted, usually without question, by reputable scholars and news media....." [Robert M. Hayden, "The Cultural Logic of Political Crisis: Common Sense, Hegemony and the Great American Liability Insurance Famine of 1986," in 11 Studies in Law, Politics, and Society 95-117 (1991)].