Philadelphia Surpasses California This Time, With California Number One In 2018-2019.
The American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) has come out with its 2019-2020 “Judicial Hellholes” Report. California slipped from #1 to #2, but only because Philadelphia was rated as really bad by ATRA.
Here is the listing of the worst venues for defendants and best for plaintiffs: (1) Philadelphia; (2) California; (3) New York City; (4) Louisiana; (5) St. Louis, Missouri; (6) Georgia; (7) Illinois (especially Cook County); (8) Oklahoma; (9) Twin Cities, Minnesota; and (10) New Jersey.
With respect to California, ATRA cited The Perryman Group as estimating that excessive tort litigation results in $11.6 billion in annual direct negative costs and loss of 197,776 jobs.
Here were the litigation areas/developments which ATRA listed as being plaintiff boons in California: Proposition 65; Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA); expansion of public nuisance law; new data privacy law; lemon law matters; class actions (especially food and beverage); invalidation of arbitration clauses; liberal independent contractor expansion via the Dynamex test; wage/hour cases; and ADA matters.