This Is The Third Time California Was So Ranked Since 2012.
According to an Editorial in the October 8, 2017 edition of The Orange County Register, California ranked 47th out of the 50 states in terms of overall fairness and reasonableness of its liability system based on a survey by the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Research of 1,321 in-house general counsel, senior litigators, or attorneys and other senior executives having recent litigation experience in the states they evaluated. This was the third time since 2012 that California received this ranking. It also ranked last in treatment of tort and contract litigation, 49th for quality of its appeal process, and 48th for treatment of class actions, according to the Editorial. The Chamber report further noted that 85% of the polled persons believed a state’s litigation environment is likely to impact business decisions (especially where to locate headquarters and plants).
In addition, for three of the past five years, California has ranked number one in the annual “Judicial Hellholes” report by the American Tort Reform Foundation. Matters contributing to this ranking were consumer class actions, as well as CEQA and ADA suits.
COMMENT: According to Wikipedia, "The Chamber has emerged as the largest lobbying organization in America. The Chamber's lobbying expenditures in 2015 were more than two-and-a-half times higher than the next highest spender: American Medical Association, at $23.9 million." The pro-business lobby generally supports Republican candidates, though it occasionally supports conservative Democrats. The Center for Justice & Democracy at New York Law School describes the American Tort Reform Association (which is affiliated to the Foundation) this way: "The American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) is a Washington-DC-based group that was formed in 1986 to represent hundreds of U.S. and foreign corporations in their bid to overhaul civil liability laws at the state and national levels. . . . ATRA's members are largely Fortune 500 companies with a direct financial stake in restricting lawsuits. . . . The tobacco industry has supported ATRA, directly through Philip Morris, and indirectly through Covington & Burling, the law firm for the now-defunct Tobacco Institute and other major tobacco companies. . . . Although sponsored by major industries, ATRA has worked hard to present a dramatically different public image of itself."