The news is decidedly mixed regarding the nation’s most notorious “judicial hellholes” — described by the American Tort Reform Association as the worst jurisdictions in which to get sued. On one hand, the watchdog group downgraded Madison County, Ill. — once the nation’s top venue for questionable class-action lawsuits — after a series of reforms sparked by public outrage greatly reduced court shopping there. Unfortunately, two more judicial hellholes — in Clark County, Nev., and Atlantic County, N.J. — have stepped in to take its place. These developments were spotlighted yesterday as ATRA released the 2007 edition of its memorably titled compilation.
The District of Columbia got a well-deserved “Dishonorable Mention” for a widely ridiculed case involving former administrative law judge Roy Pearson, who sued a D.C. dry cleaners for $54 million over a pair of lost trousers. The case dragged on for two years and cost the defendants $240,000 in legal fees before it was finally dismissed in a two-day trial.
They’re hardly alone. Every day, defendants are forced to defend themselves from frivolous lawsuits that clog our judicial system and often leave them financially ruined — even if they prevail in court or never even go to court. The willful abuse of our legal system by some unscrupulous lawyers and their money-grubbing clients is even worse. For example, ATRA reports that one Ohio judge wound up barring all members of a law firm from his courtroom after discovering they had surreptitiously been seeking payoffs for the same shipyard worker’s death from asbestos trusts and a cigarette manufacturer.
It’s particularly hard for targeted companies and individuals to get a fair hearing in ATRA’s Top Three Judicial Hellholes of 2007: South Florida, Cook County, Ill., and Texas’ Gulf Coast and Rio Grande Valley. But the same thing is happening to a lesser degree in far too many jurisdictions across the country.
A lawyer in New York City sued her florist for more than $400,000 for substituting pastel hydrangeas for the rust and dark green ones she ordered for her wedding. Another New Yorker sued the local power company because a steam pipe explosion outside her Manhattan office building, which did not injure her, evoked “bad memories” of 9/11.
The court system exists to make legitimately injured parties whole, not to be used by shysters and extortionists to shake down anybody they choose. All Americans are guaranteed equal protection under the law, but they won’t get it as long as any of these judicial hellholes remain open for business.
