Formerly number one on the annual Judicial Hellhole ranking, St. Louis has dropped to number seven in 2020 thanks to a few legislative changes.
“With regard to St Louis, we are happy to give credit to the legislature and Gov. Mike Parson for the enactment of legislative reform of the state's Merchandising Practices Act, which has been an objective for quite some time for us,” American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) President Tiger Joyce said.
Cities and even entire states are categorized as a judicial hellhole based on evaluation of court systems.
The reform of punitive damages is another positive that Joyce said is helping St. Louis gradually inch out of the top 10.
“I know more is on the table for consideration in the coming year but it remains to be seen what happens,” Joyce told the St. Louis Record. “We're pleased with the reforms that we saw this last year.”
In order to be removed from the list entirely, Joyce said the Supreme Court of Missouri should play a role.
“The fact that the Missouri Supreme court refused to take up the jurisdictional challenges on the high profile talcum powder litigation is obviously of concern and interest as is the litigation with regard to Roundup because there are a lot of cases still pending there despite the fact that there is a proposal for a global settlement,” Joyce said in an interview.
As previously reported in the St. Louis Record, lawyers for Johnson & Johnson argued that many of the plaintiffs were from out of state and their cases did not belong in Missouri.
“This jurisdictional issue is very important," Joyce added.
More than 15,000 jobs a year are lost because of lawsuit abuse and cost the city’s economy up to $1 billion, according to ATRA data.
“That illustrates the scope of the problem in the state,” Joyce said. “If the state were simply to revert to what would be more of a middle of the road jurisdiction in comparison to other states, that's obviously a matter that we care about along with forum shopping and proper expert evidence.”
An emerging area Joyce said will be of concern in the future is COVID-19 premises liability.
“We're in the very early stages and I think there is so much still that is unknown,” he said. “While there have been well more than 6,000 cases filed around the country, the truth is that there are relatively few that actually deal with premises-type of exposure cases or workers' comp cases.”
As of Dec. 8, there have been 328,206 coronavirus cases reported statewide and 4,355 fatalities, according to Missouri’s COVID-19 dashboard. In St. Louis city and county alone, there have been 12,690 cases and 235 deaths to date.
“In dealing with workers' compensation, we need to make sure that this doesn't become an open-ended process to fundamentally change the workers' comp system,” Joyce said. “Those are some of the things that they're looking at in Missouri and we'd be pleased to support those efforts.”