Miscellaneous

At Least They Didn't Drop the H-Bomb

By Anne Skove, Esq.

...you know, "hellhole."

While the rest of us remove the hidden crayons from our car before it gets too hot out and wonder whether it's time to mow the lawn, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is ranking state courts.

What new this year? The difference, perhaps due to global warming or the upcoming Miley Cyrus big book o' memoirs, is that this time nobody used the phrase judicial hellhole.

Oh, wait, that's ATRA's soundbyte, not the Chamber's! They even put the little R-in-the-circle, which we do not know how to reproduce here!!! So sue us! (Kidding, O litigious ones.)

How are courts ranked? The methodology (yes, they have methodology!) claims that the Chamber's Institute for Legal Reform (you may pause here and ask yourself why the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has such a beast) conducted 23-minute "interviews with a nationally representative sample of 957 in-house general counsel or other senior litigators at companies with annual revenues of at least $100 million."

While most fact-finding institutes would cringe at this pseudo-study, we suppose it is useful to gauge attitudes of the rich and famous. The trouble is that these opinions are taken as gospel. Typical news items reporting this "story" say things like "our state is last again!"

A quick click on Google News showed 29 articles about this so-called study:

• 5 from FOXBusiness


• 2 from Bizjournals


• 1 from Bloomberg


• 2 from Point of Law


• 1 from Town Hall DC


• 1 from Legal News Line


• 7 from West Virginia sources (Wheeling Intelligencer, Bluefield Daily Telegraph, State Journal WV, Huntington Herald, West Virginia MetroNews, West Virginia Record, Charleston Daily Mail)


• 1 from Alabama sources (Birmingham News)


• 1 from UPI


• 1 from Florida (WCTV)


• 1 from Louisiana (Times-Picayune)


• 1 from California (Sacramento Bee)


• 1 from the SunHerald in Mississippi


• 1 from Triangle Business Journal NC

Only two sources -- a foreign source and the SunHerald (which ran two separate press releases) -- focused on the AAJ's reaction. See AAJ: U.S. Chamber Study Part of Extreme Corporate Agenda to Destroy Civil Justice System, Earthtimes (April 22, 2008); AAJ: U.S. Chamber's Phony Rankings Serve Extreme Corporate Agenda, SunHerald (April 22, 2008); and AAJ: U.S. Chamber Study Part of Extreme Corporate Agenda to Destroy Civil Justice System, SunHerald (April 22, 2008).

AAJ cites hotbeds of caseflow/statistical rationalism such as the National Center for State Courts and the Federal Judicial Center as evidence against the Chamber's claims of frivolity.

None of these stories (or memoirs) exhibit a shred of independent journalism. It's either "big-bad business" featuring the unedited version of the AAJ press release, or the voice of Chamber newsminions (sure the feds newsminions!). Thus, we would not be surprised to learn that Miss Cyrus was involved somehow. Does that make us paranoid?

Full post as published by court-o-rama.org on April 24, 2008 (boomark / email).