Hellhole or business haven?

Texas is improving. The Rio Grande Valley and Texas Gulf Coast slipped to third place on the American Tort Reform Foundation’s (ATRF) 2006 “Judicial Hellholes” report. Last year it landed in the top spot.

For the fifth year in a row, ATRF has compiled a listing of the six areas of the country that it finds to be the worst for judicial abuse. According to the executive summary of the report, “Judicial Hellholes are places where judges systematically apply laws and court procedures in an unfair and unbalanced manner, generally against defendants in civil lawsuits.”

The six “winners” are: 1. The entire state of West Virginia; 2. South Florida; 3. Rio Grande Valley and Gulf Coast, Texas; 4. Cook County, Ill.; 5. Madison County, Ill.; and St. Clair County, Ill.

The report also includes a “Watch List,” a “Dishonorable Mention” category, and a listing of national “Points of Light,” locations that, according to ATRF, have reasonable or improved systems of civil justice. Orleans Parish, La., made the “Watch List,” and the Louisiana Supreme Court received a “Dishonorable Mention,” but no South Central location was considered to be a “Point of Light.”

The report takes aim at trial lawyers, as well. In a news release announcing the report, American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) general counsel Victor Schwartz said, “[T]he organization formerly known as the Association of Trial Lawyers of America has pledged to undertake a massive political and public relations campaign. We’re already seeing a post-election effort to rollback reasonable reforms and undermine the fairness and predictability of our civil justice system. Expect personal injury lawyers to fight for expansions of liability with so-called ‘consumer protection’ lawsuits and public nuisance actions, among other troubling tactics.”

But American Association for Justice (AAJ) CEO Jon Haber fired back, stating, “ATRA is nothing more than a front group for insurance, pharmaceutical, and tobacco corporations seeking to evade responsibility for negligence, and this report is just another piece of their baseless propaganda.”

According to the report, the “Rio Grande Valley and Gulf Coast [of] Texas, have a reputation as a ‘plaintiff paradise.’ It is an area where extremely weak evidence can net multimillion dollar awards; jurors have relationships with the litigants in their cases; car accident lawsuits are decided without jurors knowing all the facts, including that the plaintiff was not wearing a seatbelt; and huge awards in asbestos cases are overturned due to junk science.”

However, the AAJ says that in its report the ATRF ignored key economic data, including the the fact that Texas has one of the best business climates in the country, where new jobs and small businesses are being generated at a robust rate. Some 50,000 new jobs have been created in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley and along the Gulf Coast since the last “hellhole” report was released, the AAJ says. The group’s announcement also cites Site Selection magazine’s ranking of Texas as the second “most desirable state for locating a business” in 2006.

Like beauty, it seems, whether a place is a hellhole or business haven is all in the eye, or perspective, of the beholder.

Topics Texas