WASHINGTON – According to the latest annual report of “Judicial Hellholes” released Tuesday by the American Tort Reform Association, Pennsylvania courts have garnered the No. 2 ranking for jurisdictions considered unfriendly to businesses – moving up two places from the fourth spot on the list, where they had been ranked last year.
ATRA’s yearly report stacks up where companies are perceived not to be given a fair shake in court. In the 2021 report, the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas and Supreme Court of Pennsylvania were slotted No. 4 on the list.
The report points to the presence of nuclear verdicts, forum-shopping and elimination of venue rules pertaining to medical malpractice litigation, in supporting its moving up of the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas and the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania two spots on the list, to the No. 2 ranking.
“Leadership in the Keystone State continues to turn a blind eye to the abuses occurring in the state’s civil justice system, particularly in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas and the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. In perhaps the most disappointing decision in 2022, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania eliminated the state’s venue rule for medical liability lawsuits. This decision will likely lead to a drastic increase in medical liability litigation in some of the most plaintiff-friendly courts in the state,” the report stated.
“Nuclear verdicts are prevalent in Philadelphia and the City continues to be a hotspot for mass torts including asbestos litigation and pharmaceutical litigation due to the court’s propensity for high damage awards and low barriers to entry.”
A study published this year by the Institute for Legal Reform reported that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had 78 “nuclear” verdicts (leading to individual damage awards of $10 million or more) in personal injury and wrongful death cases, over a nine-year period between 2010 and 2019.
The study calculated that the verdicts totaled over $11 billion in damages, with a median individual damage award of $20 million and Pennsylvania ranked third in nuclear verdicts per capita and fifth in total nuclear verdicts.
According to the study, medical malpractice and product liability cases accounted for over 60 percent of nuclear verdicts in Pennsylvania, with more than half of those verdicts being awarded in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas.
“The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania encouraged forum shopping and expanded liability at every turn this year,” American Tort Reform Association President Tiger Joyce said.
“This decision will likely lead to a drastic increase in forum shopping and more medical liability cases being brought to plaintiff-friendly venues like Philadelphia County’s Court of Common Pleas, where juries are more willing to award high-dollar verdicts. Increased litigation costs mean doctors and hospitals will have to pay higher liability premiums, which could lead to an access-to-care crisis as providers can’t afford to work in the area anymore.”
Joyce added that the Court has been and continues to be a hotbed of mass tort activity.
“Thousands of out-of-state lawsuits are pending in Philadelphia County’s Complex Litigation Center in cases against all sorts of product manufacturers. But Pennsylvania judges have made a habit of swinging open the courtroom doors to out-of-state plaintiffs and ignoring U.S. Supreme Court precedent on jurisdiction that would rein in these practices,” Joyce stated.
The “Judicial Hellholes” report contained further notes as to why these two Pennsylvania courts landed in the No. 2 spot on the list this year, including but not limited to the following:
• Pennsylvania courts being slow to apply the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2017 ruling in Bristol-Myers Squibb v. Superior Court of California, which instructed state courts to dismiss cases that have no connection to the state. According to the report, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania openly defied the U.S. Supreme Court in Hammons v. Ethicon, which was the state high court’s first opportunity to apply the BMS decision to claims brought by out-of-state plaintiffs in Pennsylvania courts;
• In May 2022, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania agreed to review a ruling that allowed a plaintiff lawyer to file a case against a company in any county that the business derives revenue, regardless of the forum’s connection to the underlying case. In Hangey v. Husqvarna Professional Products, Inc., the defendant, a lawn equipment seller, derived only 0.005 percent of its total sales from Philadelphia dealers. Where the trial court found that the company’s business interest in Philadelphia was negligible and the case should be tried in Bucks County, an appellate court reversed the ruling and ordered the case transferred back to Philadelphia, thus permitting the case to proceed there against all defendants in the more liability-friendly forum;
• The report states that the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas is the plaintiff bar’s preferred jurisdiction for mass tort litigation and labeled the Court’s Complex Litigation Center, which hosts mass tort programs targeting pharmaceutical and medical device companies, as “especially notorious.” Such programs include those for polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), Vena Cava Filters Zantac and Risperdal, an anti-psychotic drug.
• In 2021, Philadelphia remained the fourth-most popular jurisdiction to file lawsuits claiming injuries from exposure to asbestos, with plaintiff lawyers filing 203 asbestos lawsuits in Philadelphia in 2021. In the first half of 2022, Philadelphia dropped one spot down in the jurisdiction rankings for asbestos filings down to No. 5, despite a 27.2 percent increase in lawsuits compared to the first half of 2021. In all, more than 750 asbestos cases were pending in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas as of November 2022.
The Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas and its Complex Litigation Center have long been a sanctuary for out-of-state plaintiffs. The percentage of claims belonging to out-of-state plaintiffs has traditionally been in the high 80s.
The remainder of ATRA’s list of “Judicial Hellholes” is as follows:
1. Georgia
3. California
4. New York
5. Cook County, Illinois
6. South Carolina Asbestos Litigation
7. Louisiana
8. City of St. Louis, Missouri
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com