Legal News

Hellhole! South Florida Tops 2009 List

By Ashby Jones

That’s right, boys and girls. It’s that time again. Just in time for the holidays, ATRA, or the American Tort Reform Association, as they’ve done the past several years, has announced their list of the year’s Judicial Hellholes.

The organization describes the hellholes thusly:

Judicial Hellholes are places where judges systematically apply laws and court procedures in an inequitable manner, generally against defendants in civil lawsuits. . . . Not coincidentally, the local or state economies in many of these Hellholes jurisdictions have suffered more than most during the latest recession. And while reasonable people may disagree about the specific rankings assigned to each, no one can reasonably argue that the jurisdictions cited in this report do not qualify as Judicial Hellholes.

Without further ado, the hellholes for this year are:

1. South Florida

2. West Virginia

3. Cook County, Ill.

4. Atlantic County, NJ (and Beyond)

5. New Mexico Appellate Courts

6. New York City

Several more on the so-called “Watch List” are:

1. California

2. Alabama

3. Madison County, Ill.

4. Jefferson County, Miss.

5. Gulf Coast and Rio Grande Valley, Texas

This year, we got a kick out of the fact that shortly after an email would hit our inbox from ATRA, alerting us to the pending announcement of the Judicial Hellholes, an email from the American Association for Justice would land. One received on Monday declared: “Please note that ATRA is an organization bankrolled by insurance, tobacco, and drug companies to attack the civil justice system and gain complete immunity for their negligent behavior.” No love lost between these two organizations, eh? In any event, click here for the AAJ’s take on the hellholes report.

Law Blog YouTube Video of the Day: A smackdown between tort reformers and plaintiffs lawyers is all fine and good. But the real reason for posting on the report is so we can bring you, yet again, the video for Spinal Tap’s “Hell Hole”.

We like to reprint some of the lyrics from the song as well, as they never fail to make us chuckle:

I rode the jetstream, I hit the top
I’m eating steak and lobster tails
The sauna’s drafty, the pool’s too hot
The kitchen stinks of boiling snails. . . .

It’s better in a hell hole
You know where you stand in a hell hole
Folks lend a hand in a hell hole
Girl get me back to my hell hole.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on December 15, 2009 (boomark / email).