ST. LOUIS — The city of St. Louis and St. Clair and Madison counties have retained their top 10 positions as "judicial hellholes" in the latest ranking from the American Tort Reform Association.
St. Louis ranked seventh, and Madison and St, Clair counties (lumped in with Chicago's Cook County) ranked eighth on the list, released Tuesday.
The three St. Louis area jurisdictions have been regulars on the list, with St. Louis ranking fifth last year and the Illinois counties ranking seventh.
The report, issued annually since 2002, identifies and documents jurisdictions where judges in civil cases systematically apply laws and court procedures “in an unfair and unbalanced manner, generally to the disadvantage of defendants.”
The report said about St. Louis: "St. Louis continues to be a popular court system for traveling trial lawyers looking for a comfortable place to bring their cases. The city’s loose rules about what qualifies as “expert” scientific evidence is an added bonus."
“Trial lawyers flock to St. Louis to file their lawsuits and take advantage of the plaintiff-friendly judges,” American Tort Reform Association President Tiger Joyce said. “Out-of-state lawsuits clog the city’s courts, drain court resources and drive businesses out of the state leading to job loss.”
The report said excessive tort costs resulted in more than 15,000 jobs lost in St. Louis in 2018 and more than 32,200 jobs lost in Missouri last year. It also noted that the largest talc verdict in the U.S. was in St. Louis, $4.14 billion, and thousands of lawsuits stemming from Monsanto's Roundup weedkiller now owned by Bayer.
"Trial lawyers in St. Louis use extensive advertising to aggressively recruit clients to increase pressure on defendants to settle," the report said. "In one half of 2018, more than $2 million were spent on 28,000 local TV ads to solicit more clients.”
Click here for the full story.
