WASHINGTON – According to the latest annual report of “Judicial Hellholes” released Tuesday by the American Tort Reform Association, Pennsylvania courts have tied with Georgia for the No. 1 ranking for jurisdictions considered unfriendly to businesses.
ATRA’s yearly report ranks where companies are perceived not to be given a fair shake in court. In the 2022 report, the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas and Supreme Court of Pennsylvania were slotted No. 2 on the list.
The report points to litigation tourism, the presence of nuclear verdicts and liability-expanding decisions, in supporting the moving up of the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas and the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania to its very top ranking.
“In 2022, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania eliminated the state’s venue rule for medical liability litigation. There was concern this decision would open the flood gates for personal injury lawyers to file medical liability claims in courts they view as favorable and that is just what has happened, especially in the perennial Judicial Hellhole court – the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas. Additionally, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania broadly applied the state’s venue rule, which will further increase litigation tourism in the state,” the report stated.
“It comes as no surprise, as the Philadelphia court continues to issue nuclear verdicts at a staggering rate. An eye-popping, almost $1 billion award was levied against Mitsubishi in a product liability case in 2023. The Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas also continues to be a hotbed for out-of-state plaintiffs’ mass torts claims. Plaintiffs’ lawyers also are looking to expand premises liability for business owners in the city. Additionally, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania issued a problematic decision on punitive damages, which will only lead to more abuses and more massive verdicts.”
According to a 2022 study from the U.S. Chamber for the Institute of Legal Reform, Pennsylvania had 78 nuclear verdicts ($10 million or more) in personal injury and wrongful death cases between 2010 and 2019. These verdicts totaled over $11 billion in damages, with a median verdict amount of $20 million. The ILR owns the Pennsylvania Record.
Furthermore, Pennsylvania ranked third in per capita nuclear verdicts and fifth in total nuclear verdicts, with medical malpractice and product liability cases posing the highest risk of an astronomical award and having accounted for more than 60 percent of nuclear verdicts. The study explained that the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas hosted more than half of the state’s nuclear verdicts.
The “Judicial Hellholes” report provided additional information as to why these two Pennsylvania courts landed in the No. 1 spot on the list this year, including but not limited to the following:
• In Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway Company, a case which originated in a Pennsylvania court, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly ruled that companies may be sued in states where they have registered do business but are not based or where the alleged injuries occurred. In so doing, the nation’s top bench affirmed a Pennsylvania law that compels companies who have registered to conduct business in that state as foreign corporations to answer lawsuits brought within its jurisdiction, thus reinstating the lawsuit of a Virginia man who claimed in a Pennsylvania court his colon cancer was the result of his exposure to carcinogenic substances while working for the Norfolk Southern railroad.
• 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. Just two weeks ago, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania upheld the appellate court’s finding and ruled that a company may in fact be sued in a particular forum, regardless of the percentage of its business conducted there.
• Last year’s elimination of the venue rules for filing medical malpractice liability actions by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania has already resulted in increased filings of such cases statewide, but especially in Philadelphia, where juries are more likely to award plaintiffs larger verdicts. As of November 2023, 501 med-mal cases were filed there as compared to 250 for the same time last year, doubling the amount. From 2017 to 2019, plaintiffs bringing suit against healthcare providers in Philadelphia County won at a success rate of 36%, as compared to a 12% and 9% rate in nearby Montgomery and Lancaster counties, respectively. Due to the elimination of the venue rule, cases filed against health systems in a variety of different counties across the state have now been refiled in Philadelphia.
• The report states that the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas is a continued “hotbed” for mass tort litigation and labeled the Court’s Complex Litigation Center, which hosts mass tort programs targeting pharmaceutical and medical device companies, as a “magnet for trial lawyers nationwide who flocked to Philadelphia with hopes of scoring a nuclear verdict.”
Such programs include those for pesticide Paraquat, Vena Cava Filters, Zantac and Risperdal, an anti-psychotic drug. With a dramatic reduction in the volume of cases pending in the Complex Litigation Center, such as Risperdal litigation decreasing from 6,900 cases in 2019 to less than 330 today, the report also questioned the ongoing purpose of the CLC.
• In 2022, Philadelphia remained the fourth-most popular jurisdiction to file lawsuits claiming injuries from exposure to asbestos, with plaintiff lawyers filing 243 asbestos lawsuits there. In 2022, Philadelphia held steady in the jurisdiction rankings for asbestos filings at No. 4, despite a 20 percent increase in lawsuits compared to 2021. In all, just over 810 asbestos cases were pending in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas as of this week.
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.
Pennsylvania Coalition for Civil Justice Reform (PCCJR) Executive Director Curt Schroder issued a statement on the report.
“While some may quibble with the terminology of the report or the rankings themselves, no one can seriously dispute that 2023 marked another year of expanded liability for businesses, healthcare providers, insurers, and other defendants in Pennsylvania,” Schroder said.
“The [state] Supreme Court’s decision in Hangey will only ensure that the number and amounts of nuclear verdicts and thermonuclear verdicts continue to climb, as virtually any defendant with a de minimis amount of business in Philadelphia will be sued there.”
Schroder also remarked on the increase of med-mal filings statewide, subsequent to the PCCJR making a formal request to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania’s Civil Rules Committee earlier this year that the venue rule change be re-examined.
“Some companies will simply stop doing business in Pennsylvania because the legal system is so stacked against them. The good jobs and livelihoods they provide will leave with them,” Schroder said.
The remainder of ATRA’s list of “Judicial Hellholes” is as follows:
1. Georgia (Tie)
2. Cook County, Illinois
3. California
4. New York City
5. South Carolina Asbestos Litigation
6. Lansing, Michigan
7. Louisiana
8. St. Louis, Missouri
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com