Missouri Chamber of Commerce members and other businesses considering expanding in the state are reportedly thinking twice before they do so because St. Louis has a reputation for being a judicial hellhole.
“They are astounded by the Johnson & Johnson award and some of the developments that lead to it,” said Daniel P. Mehan, president, and CEO of the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Mehan was among the speakers participating in a Washington Legal Foundation webinar this week called Ingham v. J&J: A Supreme Court Petition Spotlights Due-Process Concerns in America’s Mass Tort Environment.
“The overall climate is that this is not an irregular occurrence for us and without fixing the legal climate, companies are one lawsuit away from a similar fate,” Mehan said.
The webinar focused on a Missouri appeals court decision upholding an award of $2.1 billion in compensatory and punitive damages to 22 plaintiffs in Ingham v. Johnson & Johnson.
“They brought their claims in the city of St. Louis state court and convinced the court to try all 22 cases,” said Glenn Lammi, executive director and vice president of legal studies at the Washington Legal Foundation. “Only five of the plaintiffs resided in Missouri and none of the 22 plaintiff's could offer evidence that proved the causation or relationship between the top products and their cancer.”
A writ of certiorari was filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on March 2, seeking review of the Missouri appeals court decision.
“At the most fundamental level, they should not have allowed that many dissimilar cases to be tried together,” said Evan Trager, partner with Partner, Mayer Brown law firm in Washington, D.C. “You have some plaintiffs whose injuries were comparatively minor.”
Formerly number one on the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA)'s annual Judicial Hellhole ranking, St. Louis dropped to number seven last year due to legislative changes, including reforms to laws on punitive damages, venue, and joinder, as previously reported.
“From our perspective, when we look at these matters from the standpoint of our hellholes report and our general policy, we think that the real onus falls on the judiciary,” said Sherman Tiger Joyce, president of ATRA. “To allow something like this award to happen does not constitute due process for the defendant.”
Among the elements that continue to factor into a judicial hellhole is expert evidence.
“In these very large complex cases involving consumer products like Johnson & Johnson, the judiciary is seemingly willing to allow in any so-called expert testimony and judges are not really doing their job of policing the process to ensure that generally accepted scientific principles are presented to jurors,” Joyce said.