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judge's gavel

published on December 14, 2022 - 2:26 PM
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The American Tort Reform Foundation’s Judicial Hellholes report has been published, seeing California fall to third on the list behind Georgia, The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and The Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.

The American Tort Reform Foundation (ATRF) aims to expose the regions of the country that demonstrate unfair or unbalanced rulings in court cases, as well as expose regions with excessive “tort tax,” that is, an excessive fee levied in a case involving injuries caused by negligence or with intention.

California held the top spot in the 2021/22 list, citing its pursuit of liability-expanding principles as the primary cause for its high ranking.

California was also ranked third due to numerous Prop-65 lawsuits, as well as Private Attorney General Act (PAGA) and Americans with Disability Act (ADA) lawsuits.

The state’s drop from first to third this year was largely in part to the State of Georgia’s Supreme Court’s issuance of several liability-expanding decisions, as well as the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and The Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, arguing that plaintiffs from across the country seek out the Court of Common Pleas to take advantage of its “open door” policy when it comes to out-of-state plaintiffs.

President of the American Tort Reform Association Tiger Joyce said that California hadn’t as much “improved” as the current holders of the number one and two spots regressed in the eyes of legislative fairness.

“Putting Georgia number one was a surprise, but I think the Ford case was a surprise,” Joyce said, referencing a case settled earlier this year against the Ford Motor Company in which the plaintiffs were awarded $1.7 billion in a case surrounding the deaths of a Georgia couple.

The settlement, while deducing that 5.2 Ford F150 million pickup trucks were built with the same roof defect, failed to include evidence that the vehicle occupants were not properly wearing their seatbelts — a fact that Joyce said was not presented to the jury during the case.

In California, Proposition 65 requires businesses to place warnings on products that contain more than 1,000 chemicals deemed carcinogenic or toxic — 110 of which have been added in the past decade.

This leads to more potential lawsuits – some necessary and some unfair, according to the ATRF.

“A troublesome part of the law allows private citizens, advocacy groups and attorneys to sue on behalf of the state and collect a portion of the monetary penalties and settlements, creating an incentive for the plaintiffs’ bar to pursue these types of lawsuits,” reads the ATRF 2022/23 summary of judicial hellholes.

The report also states that currently, the State of California has more than 30,000 active cases pending, including 4,000 cases in an MDL case in Northern California.

Also included in the report are examples of no-injury lawsuits throughout the state, in particular, a 2021 statistic stating that 78 food and beverage companies were named in class action lawsuits, compared to 58 in 2020.

Joyce added that tension between the courts and legislators is common — an inevitable part of the system.

“Our focus is on simply bringing widespread attention to the issues that we see and let the chips fall where they may,” he said. “Sometimes the reforms look like they should be working and maybe the courts have not gotten the message.”

Joyce also said that furthering the information and transparency of these litigations is one effort that should be made to bring all parties up to speed on what issues need to be addressed.

“In some ways, a lot of the issues that we focused on in the past…those issues continue,” Joyce said. “I think we now see some issues that we’re beginning to put more of an emphasis on.”


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