Today, the American Tort Reform Foundation released its 2018-2019 Judicial Hellholes report. California tops the list, with Florida, New York City and St. Louis not far behind.
Judicial HellholesPerennial Judicial Hellhole Madison County, Illinois is not ready to give up its dubious distinction as the top asbestos litigation destination anytime soon.
According to a recent midyear report and earlier annual report by KCIC Consulting, Madison County’s asbestos filings increased by 5% from 2014 to 2015 and continued to increase during the first half of 2016. The riverside county of fewer than 270,000 people was home to 29% of the nation’s asbestos filings in the first half of 2016 – up from 25% of the nation’s asbestos filings in 2015. Now, the county sits atop the ranking with more than twice as many filings as second place Baltimore City.
Judicial HellholesThough release of ATRA’s annual Judicial Hellholes® report is still more than three months away, this special bulletin alerts readers to a new report, Justice for Sale III, issued by the Illinois Civil Justice League, detailing and quantifying the campaign contributions and enormous political influence that plaintiffs’ lawyers Madison County, Illinoisexert on policymakers and judges throughout the hellholes riddled state
Judicial HellholesOn the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, a civil justice watchdog group in Illinois has released its latest “Litigation Imbalance” study, the findings of which surely have the 16th president and Great Emancipator spinning in his grave
Judicial HellholesMadison County hosted 1,300 new asbestos lawsuit filings in 2014. Madison County’s docket has doubled in the last four years and tripled in the last seven. Nine of ten plaintiffs who file in Madison County don’t live in Illinois. And less than 1% live in Madison County.
Judicial HellholesThe latest in a long line of plaintiff-friendly asbestos judges in Madison County, Illinois, recently denied dozens of defendants’ perfectly persuasive motions for forum non conveniens in four separate cases, making it ironically clear that jurors, not judges, are asbestos defendants’ only hope for justice in this perennial Judicial Hellhole
Judicial HellholesMadison County, Illinois, currently ranked as the #3 Judicial Hellhole nationwide, managed in 2012 to shatter its old record for newly filed asbestos lawsuits
Judicial HellholesVoters in perennial judicial hellhole West Virginia have finally had enough of long-serving anti-business Attorney General Darrell McGraw. Californians rejected trial lawyer-written, lawsuit-promoting Proposition 37. And Madison County, Illinois voters incredibly retained shamed pay-to-play Judge Barbara Crowder who fomrerly oversaw the small rural county’s crooked and largest-in-the-nation asbestos docket
Judicial Hellholes, Points of LightWith election season heading for the homestretch, a grassroots group in once-and-future judicial hellhole Madison County, Illinois continues to garner plenty of regional media attention as it works to convince voter’s there to vote “no” on four judges up for retention
Judicial HellholesA grassroots group calling itself Citizens for Judicial Integrity (CFJI) is now actively working to unseat four judges in Madison County, Illinois, a jurisdiction cited almost annually as a Judicial Hellhole
UncategorizedComing less than six weeks after a potentially game-changing judicial reform order in Philadelphia, the #1 Judicial Hellhole for the past two years, a judge in another perennial Hellhole has issued a comparable reform order that could serve to significantly shrink the nation’s largest asbestos docket
Judicial Hellholes, Points of LightOn Monday, March 26, more than 100 attorneys crowded into a Madison County courtroom to listen as 61 asbestos defendants asked Associate Judge Clarence Harrison to revise the court’s 2013 advance trial docket
Judicial HellholesVideo cameras appear to be on their way to the plaintiff-friendly courts of Madison County as part of a pilot program recently approved by the Illinois Supreme Court
Judicial HellholesMadison County’s controversial asbestos litigation system is once again under fire and causing a stir. Recently, presiding Judge Clarence Harrison
Judicial HellholesA recent $1.25 million plaintiffs verdict in a railway crossing accident case tried in Madison County, Illinois has thankfully been reversed and remanded, but the judge’s conduct of the original trial speaks volumes about why the jurisdiction is a perennial Judicial Hellhole, and why plaintiffs from across the country hurry to board the “Madison County Express”
Judicial HellholesThough judges in the infamous Judicial Hellhole of Madison County, Illinois have allowed supporters of the troubled organic farming industry to perpetuate a meritless class action against the makers of a safe and widely used weed killer for eight long years, a no-nonsense federal judge in New York was not as patient
Judicial Hellholes, Points of LightATRA previously exposed the apparently hypocritical connections between plaintiffs’ lawyers, activists at an enviro-radical website, and organic farming advocates who share an interest in a meritless and costly lawsuit dragging on since 2004 in perennial judicial hellhole Madison County, Illinois. Now ATRA and an ally have published the first in a series of op-eds to offer developing details
Judicial HellholesThe Center for Media and Democracy issued a non-denial denial that its WikiLeaks-wannabe website, SourceWatch.org, had posted and then scrambled to take down a deposition transcript and previously unsealed but not yet public court documents connected to a major class action playing out in Madison County, Illinois
Judicial HellholesCaught in the act by Judicial Hellholes reporters late last week, WikiLeaks wannbe “SourceWatch.org” is now scambling to pull down previoulsy posted court documents, particularly the ones that suggest a direct link between it and the plaintiffs’ attorneys in a Madison County class action against the makers of a safe and widely used weed killer.
Judicial HellholesWe’ll post more about this soon, but sources tell Judicial Hellholes reporters that a would-be WikiLeaks-like website is poised to
Judicial HellholesJust before the latest Judicial Hellholes® report was released last December 15, Madison County Circuit Judge Barbara Crowder was barred by
Judicial Hellholes