CHARLESTON – For years, West Virginia found itself at or near the top of the American Tort Reform Association’s annual Judicial Hellholes report.
A few years ago, after several reforms enacted by the Republican-led Legislature, the state moved to ATRA’s Watch List. In 2021, West Virginia was on the report’s “Escaped List” for its 20th anniversary edition.
And then, the Mountain State was listed as a Point of Light for a few years follow the reforms that had been enacted.
This year’s report, which was released December 10, only mentioned West Virginia one time when discussing a reform enacted earlier this year requiring automatic disclosure of litigation funding agreements to other parties and to prohibit funders from attempting to influence the litigation or its resolution.
A spokesman for a statewide reform group says it is proud of the role it has played in reforming West Virginia’s legal system.
“West Virginia was the original Judicial Hellhole and was on the list for 11 consecutive years,” Greg Thomas of West Virginia Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse told The West Virginia Record. “Our state was widely recognized for having the most unfair litigation climate in the entire country.
“But after changing the make-up of the West Virginia State Supreme Court, creating the new Intermediate Appellate Court, and passing dozens of legal reform bills after the change in leadership in the Legislature, West Virginia is barely mentioned in the Judicial Hellholes report.”
But Thomas also said there still is work to do.
“We are certainly not giving up now,” he said. “West Virginia no longer has the worst courts in the nation, but we don’t have the best either. We will continue to educate the public and state leaders on the benefits of legal reform and how much it has played a part in the turnaround of our state’s economy.
“Our state still has the lowest workforce participation rate in the county and some of the lowest public education test scores in the nation. We must strive to create good paying jobs and increase access to affordable healthcare if we want West Virginia to be the best we can possibly be.”
However, the president of a statewide group for trial lawyers said the ATRA report always has been meaningless.
“The Judicial Hellhole report has been discredited by the media and independent research for more than 20 years, but Greg Thomas has used it to push through bad legislation to restrict access to the courts and limit our constitutional right to trial by jury,” Steven Broadwater of the West Virginia Association for Justice told The Record. “He's celebrating legislation that has done nothing but harm our workforce and failed to create a single job.
“All those bills have done is taken money out of West Virginia to pad the profits of the billion-dollar corporations behind ATRA and CALA.”
Broadwater said the state has more pressing issues.
“If Greg wants to help West Virginia he should stop wasting the Legislature’s time,” Broadwater said. “Let our lawmakers get to work on making our schools better, improving statewide Internet access and developing training programs for 21st century jobs. Those are initiatives that will grow jobs and improve our economy.”
The ATRA report highlights jurisdictions in which businesses don't feel they are treated fairly by judges, legislators and juries. This year’s top 10 Judicial Hellholes are:
Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court; New York City; South Carolina asbestos litigation; Georgia; California, Cook County, Illinois; St. Louis, Missouri; Michigan Supreme Court; King County, Washington; and Louisiana.