Donohue
Jones
Manchin
CHARLESTON – For the second consecutive year, a national survey ranks West Virginia's legal climate as the worst in the country.
Critics, however, call the survey and its results more propaganda from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The Chamber's Institute for Legal Reform on Wednesday unveiled the findings of Lawsuit Climate 2007: Rating the States, its annual assessment of state liability systems conducted by Harris Interactive. This year, West Virginia ranked last on all twelve of the factors rated.
"The West Virginia legislature is going out of its way to put a 'Closed for Business' sign on West Virginia's front door," Tom Donohue, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber, said in a press release. "It is apparent that they are more interested in appeasing trial lawyers than in helping the state's employers create jobs and new business investment in West Virginia."
The West Virginia Trial Lawyers Association called the report propaganda "created to dupe West Virginia lawmakers into destroying important consumer protection and workplace safety laws, giving corporate wrongdoers immunity when they harm West Virginians."
"The U. S. Chamber's so-called study is nothing more than a trumped up public relations gimmick to advance its political agenda of destroying consumer protection laws and providing total immunity to billion-dollar corporations that break the law," WVTLA President Jeff Jones said Wednesday. "The real goal of this propaganda campaign is not 'fixing' anything. The U. S. Chamber doesn't care about West Virginia consumers, West Virginia workers or West Virginia jobs. These corporations want total immunity when they produce dangerous products, put workers in unsafe working conditions, break contracts with our businesses or cheat royalty owners our of their fair royalty payments.
"It's time for West Virginians to stand up to these big-money special interests and tell them that we take care of West Virginia first -- not their corporate profits."
The study results came from a survey of 1,599 senior attorneys, and the Chamber says it is the preeminent standard by which companies, policymakers and the media measure the legal environment of states. The West Virginia Record is owned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
This is the second consecutive year in which West Virginia ranked last among the 50 states. The Mountain State has languished near the bottom of the rankings since ILR began conducting the ILR/Harris Interactive survey six years ago. For the sixth year in a row, Delaware is ranked number one.
One factor cited by the U.S. Chamber in West Virgina's ranking is the failure of the Legislature to pass meaningful legal reform.
"This legislature and governor had a prime opportunity this year to fix the damage done by the state Supreme Court's repeal of the venue statute," Donohue said. "Instead, they passed a fatally flawed bill that does nothing but make out-of-state employers think twice about doing business in West Virginia."
According the U.S. Chamber, the venue bill signed by Gov. Joe Manchin (HB 2956) contains loopholes that make it significantly weaker than the 2003 venue statute which was struck down by the West Virginia Supreme Court last summer, and will encourage out-of-state plaintiffs to bring lawsuits that have no connection to West Virginia.
A spokeswoman for Manchin said the governor and his staff acknowledge the venue bill isn't perfect, but that the state has made "significant" progress in the last two-and-a-half years.
"We see progress has been made in the last two years," Lara Ramsburg said Wednesday. 'For some reason, they (the U.S. Chamber) don't. We've seen progress on insurance reform, third-party bad faith …
"The venue bill has issues, but we're going to address that."
Ramsburg said Manchin and his staff deserve some credit for the work that has been done since he became governor in 2005.
"We think the majority of people who have watched the process would say we're making progress," she said.
She also said the administration will look at improving the venue bill as soon as possible, whether that is during a special session this year or during next year's regular session.
"The first opportunity – even if that isn't until next year regular session -- it's a priority for him," Ramsburg said. "We will deal with that as soon as we can. We're always looking at everything."
Jones of the WVTLA also points out that West Virginia's ranking in the study hasn't changed over the years despite the passage of numerous changes to our civil justice system. He said the Legislature has passed significant tort reforms pushed by the Chamber, including caps on medical malpractice damages, the elimination of third-party bad faith, the privatization of the state's workers compensation system and changes to joint and several liability.
"Four years ago, these big corporations told us that if we made it harder for patients harmed by medical malpractice to hold bad doctors accountable, things would improve," Jones said. "They told us that if we made it harder for workers hurt on the job to get compensation, things would improve. They told us that if we eliminated the right for consumers to hold insurance companies who cheated them accountable, things would improve, but nothing has changed.
"This year we worked with business interests to put together a compromise reform bill, but we still are bombarded by the U. S. Chamber's unrelenting campaign attacking our state and our lawmakers. It's ridiculous."
The WVTLA also argues that the survey only talks to corporate attorneys who are employed as in-house counsel by corporations that earn at least $100 million in annual profits. That means that last year, less than 10 percent of the respondents had first-hand knowledge of the state's courts.
"Very few of the attorneys who participate in this study have ever stood before a West Virginia judge," Jones said. "These are in-house attorneys who are responding exactly the way the Chamber tells them -- and the results are exactly what the Chamber wants them to be."
The Harris Interactive/ILR ranking survey is available online at www.instituteforlegalreform.com.