Missouri lawmakers “took great strides toward addressing lawsuit abuse” in 2020, but St. Louis remains a “judicial hellhole,” according to an annual assessment produced by the American Tort Reform Foundation.
“The City of St. Louis Circuit Court is notorious for allowing blatant forum shopping and awarding excessive punitive damage awards,” ATRF writes in its 2020-21 Judicial Hellholes report released Tuesday. “The court also fails to ensure cases are guided by sound science.”
ATRF ranked St. Louis courts as the nation’s seventh-worst in 2020, which is an improvement after being ranked fourth- and fifth-biggest “judicial hellholes” in 2018 and 2019.
The full 2020-2021 Judicial Hellholes rankings are:
- Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas and the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
- New York City
- California
- South Carolina’s Asbestos Litigation
- Louisiana
- Georgia
- City of St. Louis
- Cook, Madison and St. Clair Counties, Illinois
- Minnesota
ATRF notes a 2020 Perryman Group report estimates “excessive tort costs to the Missouri economy result in $2 billion in annual direct costs and $3.1 billion in annual output. Ultimately, this costs the state an estimated 32,205 jobs.”
ATRF praised Missouri lawmakers’ sweeping changes to the state’s punitive damages law and its consumer protection statute, the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act (MMPA), with the 2020 adoption of Senate Bill 591.
Since MMPA provides for attorney’s fees and punitive damages, it “incentivizes the trial bar to include an MMPA claim when filing personal injury and other lawsuits. This poses a real threat, particularly for small businesses, because punitive damages are not covered by insurance policies,” according to ATRF.
As a result, “Personal injury lawyers flock to St. Louis to file lawsuits to take advantage of the plaintiff-friendly judges. These ‘out-of-state’ plaintiffs clog the city’s courts, drain court resources, and drive businesses out of the state leading to job loss.”
Examples include the July 2018 award of $550 million in actual damages and $4.14 billion in punitive damages to 22 plaintiffs who claimed their ovarian cancer was caused by exposure to asbestos allegedly found in Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder.
“Of the 22 women involved in the lawsuit, 17 had no connection to Missouri. Each was awarded the same amount of money, despite there being different facts for each, and differences in relevant law. After a six-week trial, jurors deliberated for less than a full day before reaching this astounding result,” ATRF said.
Under SB 591, judges may dismiss claims when no reasonable consumer would be misled by the advertising, labeling, or other practices challenged in the lawsuit, and there are defined requirements for class-action proceedings.
“The reform also should prevent plaintiffs’ lawyers from misusing MMPA claims in personal injury lawsuits,” ATRF writes, but it’s not confident St. Louis County judges and juries will follow the rules.
The Missouri Association of Trial Attorneys (MATA) Director of Communications Jeannie Brandstetter dismissed the ATRF report Monday, referring to MATA responses from 2019. Among them:
- ATRF is a “corporate front” and its report “is nothing more than transparent propaganda paid for by huge corporations that want to evade accountability for harming and killing Americans.”
- “The authors seem to believe a ‘hellhole’ is a place where harmed consumers have a right to ask a judge and jury to hear evidence about how corporate misconduct has harmed them or damaged their quality of life.”
- “The reports are just strange, to the point of being hard to take seriously: a recent edition defended corporations’ ability to force customers into arbitration by making a twisted comparison to ISIS beheadings, complete with an illustration.”
