St. Clair County Circuit Judge Jan Fiss has continued hearings on a felony ballot violation charge against Steveland Kidd for almost four years, but on the most recent occasion Fiss skipped the formalities altogether.

 At a status conference on Dec. 8, Fiss signed orders in at least a dozen criminal cases but none for Kidd, who didn’t appear in person or by counsel.

 Kidd’s prosecutor, assistant state’s attorney Daniel Lewis, didn’t appear either.

 Fiss conducted the conference in chambers for an hour and 15 minutes, with lawyers passing through his silent courtroom.

 Fiss emerged at last, held a brief public proceeding in one case, and left.

 His clerk confirmed that Kidd’s case had not come up in chambers.

 Kidd allegedly took an absentee ballot for deposit into the mail in March 2013.

 The docket for the conference also showed two pending ordinance violations against him from 2008, and traffic tickets from 2011 and 2014. 

 Five other suspects in felony ballot violations have avoided accountability for more than 18 months.

 Fiss has set a Dec. 19 conference for Shavette Wills, who allegedly committed perjury by signing a false affidavit in the March 2015 election.

District Judge Staci Yandle denied a St. Clair County tax buyer’s motion to dismiss a class action alleging St. Clair County Treasurer Charles Suarez and several tax buyers participated in a bid rigging conspiracy.

Yandle filed her order denying dismissal for defendant Barrett Rochman on Nov. 17.

Rochman filed a combined motion to dismiss through attorneys Andrew Kasnetz, Timothy Sansone and Natalie Kussart of Sandberg Phoenix & von Gontard in St. Louis.

Defendants Kenneth Rochman, Sabre Group LLC and SI Securities LLC joined in the motion.

The defendants argued that the complaint is time-barred under the statute of limitations.

In her order, Yandle held that the complaint raises a reasonable inference that the limitations period was tolled until 2014 when the plaintiffs discovered the injury.

The defendants also argued that count I for “civil conspiracy” should be dismissed because antitrust claims cannot be asserted as civil conspiracy claims under Illinois law.

Yandle noted that while the plaintiffs cannot recover under both the Illinois Antitrust Act and common law theories, they may allege both theories and choose which theories of recovery to pursue at trial.

The defendants further argue that count II for “money had and received” should be dismissed because the complaint fails to state a claim. They specifically claim that the Illinois Property Tax Code permits an 18 percent penalty rate, and no more than an 18 percent penalty was charged.

Yandle held that the plaintiff’s allegation that the illegally rigged tax sales unfairly ensuring the highest penalties would be charged is sufficient to state a claim for money had and received.

The defendants also argued that counts III and IV failed to state a claim under the Sherman Act. They claim the plaintiffs make “fundamentally deficient allegations.”

However, Yandle wrote that “proof of an explicit agreement is not required to plead a Sherman Act antitrust conspiracy claim.”

“Here, Plaintiffs pled sufficient facts to survive a motion to dismiss. The factual allegations include specific details about the agreement and how sales were structured to eliminate competition,” the order states.

The plaintiffs also provided allegations that sufficiently identify a relevant market, she held.

“Competition is clearly envisioned by the Property Tax Code,” Yandle wrote. “Further, Plaintiffs’ allegations reasonably set forth tax lien certificates as products that fall within the definition of commodity.”

Yandle further held that the plaintiffs sufficiently pled exclusionary conduct and monopoly power to survive a motion to dismiss.

“The alleged conduct is exclusionary in that it ‘had the effect of preventing other competitors from receiving the winning bid at the tax sale auctions’ by ‘fixing, controlling, maintaining, limiting, and/or discontinuing the bidding of lower rates during the auction process,’” the order states.

“The alleged arrangement between Defendant Suarez and tax-purchaser defendants prevented competitive bids except on less lucrative properties, which were allowed in order to conceal the conspiracy,” it continued.

As an alternative to dismissal, the defendants moved for a more definite statement or to strike the allegations regarding fraudulent concealment, which was denied.

Calling motions to strike “time wasters,” Yandle held that “the challenged paragraphs and exhibits are neither immaterial nor scandalous and that Defendants will not be significantly prejudiced by them.”

Two couples sued Suarez and tax buyers in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois on Oct. 17, 2014, alleging a conspiracy similar to one that sent former Madison County treasurer Fred Bathon to prison.

John Bloyer Jr., Adrianne Bloyer, Kevin Dvorak and Kathleen Dvorak, all of O’Fallon, claim the alleged conspirators artificially inflated interest rates at tax sales in 2007 and 2008. They claim Suarez illegally rigged bids at sales of delinquent taxes to enrich Democratic campaign contributors.

The plaintiffs sought access to the defendants’ sealed criminal sentencing documents in their discovery requests. The defendants objected.

Rochman also answered the plaintiff’s class action complaint on Nov. 17, asserting 14 affirmative defenses.

Rochman argued that he was not a conspirator in this action. He says that if a conspiracy is proven, that third parties or co-defendants who participated in the alleged conspiracy are liable for all damages.

The defendant alleged that the voluntary payment doctrine bars recovery because someone on the plaintiffs’ behalf voluntarily paid the defendant an 18 percent penalty rate to redeem their properties.

Rochman also argued that the claims are barred by the doctrine of accord and satisfaction, “because the payments of the disputed amounts to redeem the Plaintiffs’ delinquent property taxes sold at the Madison County real estate tax sale auctions conducted in 2005 through 2008, were tendered as full payments of all demands, accepted by the Defendants with an understanding that such tender was full payment of all disputed amounts owed to the Defendants.”

Similar to the defendant’s motion to dismiss, Rochman also argued that the complaint is barred by the statute of limitations and the complaint fails to state a claim.

Another recent study produced by the ICJL shows the significance of trial lawyer contributions to Illinois judges and politicians over the past 15 years - all totaled, $35.35 million.

Madison and St. Clair county courts, which along with Cook County host the state’s highest concentrations of civil litigation, factor prominently in the ICJL study, "Justice for Sale III."

The Metro-East St. Louis region joined the ranks yet again as this year’s worst jurisdictions, with St. Louis topping the American Tort Reform Association’s Judicial Hellholes list and Madison and St. Clair Counties ranking sixth in the nation.

St. Louis is ranked as the worst Judicial Hellhole with courts in California; the New York City Asbestos Litigation; Florida Supreme Court and South Florida; courts in New Jersey; Cook, Madison and St. Clair Counties; courts in Louisiana; Newport News, Va.; and Hidalgo County, Texas, completing this year’s list of top nine Judicial Hellholes.

“Christmas comes but once a year for most of us, but for the personal injury lawyers who have turned the Madison and St. Clair County courthouse into their own personally profitable playground, it’s Christmas every day,” stated Travis Akin, executive director of Illinois Lawsuit Abuse Watch (I-LAW).

St. Louis

The City of St. Louis climbed its way to the top of the Judicial Hellholes list for the first time this year. The entire state of Missouri ranked fourth in last year’s Judicial Hellholes report.

Calling Missouri the “Show Me Your Lawsuits” State, ATRA notes that St. Louis managed to knock California out of its usual number one place with “’fast trials, favorable rulings and big awards.’”

In fact, four of the top six product liability verdicts in the country this year came out of the St. Louis Circuit Court.

ATRA says St. Louis is a hotspot for out-of-state plaintiffs thanks to Missouri’s “lax standard for expert testimony” and laws allowing forum shopping.

The Hellholes report outlines the newest “trap, trash and trick” tactics used by plaintiff’s lawyers to bring roughly 2,100 individual talcum powder claims, which were grouped into about 260 separate lawsuits nationwide.

These cases allege that use of talcum powder causes ovarian cancer. However, the Hellholes report states that no scientifically sound evidence exists.

Approximately two-thirds of the talcum powder claims have been filed in St. Louis, and just three huge verdicts this year total $197 million in awards for plaintiffs form Alabama, South Dakota and California.

ATRA explains that the trap tactic involves plaintiff’s attorneys trapping talc defendants in St. Louis because Missouri “is one of a shrinking minority of holdout states that have yet to adopt the more exacting Daubert standard for expert testimony.”

Daubert provides a standard requiring “judges to act as gatekeepers in reviewing the substance of expert testimony before it is presented to a jury in order to weed out fanciful evidentiary theories that haven’t passed peer-review muster.”

ATRA also credits the state’s venue laws for enabling plaintiff’s attorneys to trap talc cases in St. Louis, which “allows lawsuits to be filed in any county where at least one individual claimant – among the scores comprising a typical talc lawsuit – resided [where] her alleged injury occurred.”

Further, a local “anchor-claimant” can be added for the sole purpose of keeping a litigation in state court.

Plaintiff’s lawyers also avoid the federal Class Action Fairness Act’s threshold for removal to federal court by keeping the plaintiff count under 100.

The tactic involves plaintiff’s firms investing in local TV advertising to “trash” defendants and their products.

“Ostensibly packaged as client solicitations, the incessant ads more practically function as a means to influence potential jurors,” the report states.

For example, Johnson & Johnson talc defendants in plaintiff Tiffany Hogans’ lawsuit filed a motion to change venue in July, seeking to transfer the case to a jurisdiction that is “outside the St. Louis media market and at least 100 miles away in order to minimize the jury taint” from the ads.

The report states that in March alone, 23 percent of all talcum powder litigation ads aired in St. Louis even though the market comprises 1 percent of the national television audience.

What gets lost on the public is that the scientific, medical and regulatory communities say that no relationship between talcum powder and ovarian cancer exists.

ATRA points out that two experts who testified in St. Louis were deemed unqualified to testify in New Jersey, where two talc cases were dismissed in September.

“Nevertheless, defendants’ pleadings to have those so-called experts excluded from St. Louis trials fall on deaf ears. Judges there invariably allow the introduction of this junk science and, with visibly ill women or their surviving loved ones as sympathetic clients, practiced injury lawyers then pluck jurors’ heartstrings and persuade them to come back with outlier verdicts that fly in the face of genuine science,” the report states.

In late June, lame-duck Gov. Jay Nixon vetoed legislation that would have adopted the Daubert standard for expert evidence in Missouri.

“But lawmakers are expected to try again in 2017, and with a newly elected governor who’s less dependent on plaintiff’s bar cash, hope springs eternal,” the report states.

ATRA notes in its report that “junk science” in Missouri courts extends beyond talc suits.

In May 2016, a St. Louis jury returned a $46.5 million verdict against Monsanto in a case alleging three plaintiffs developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma by eating foods contaminated with PCBs. The plaintiffs were residents of Alaska, Michigan and Oklahoma.

Nearly 100 plaintiffs have similar cases pending in St. Louis, with only three from Missouri.

The American Cancer Society argues that most forms of non-Hodgkin lymphoma have no known cause, and lymphomas typically develop as people age.

The Hellholes report states that the “Show Me Your Lawsuits State” became a “litigation tourism hot spot” following a unanimous decision by the state’s Supreme Court in October that “effectively rolls out a welcome mat for out-of-state plaintiffs suing out-of-state defendants over alleged out-of-state injuries.”

In that case, Heartland Title Services and James Day asked the Missouri Supreme Court to prohibit Jackson County Judge Kevin Harrell form dismissing one of the plaintiff’s claims in the circuit court for lack of venue.

The Supreme Court held that venue was proper in any Missouri county when personal and subject matter jurisdiction are established.

“It adopted the plaintiff’s argument that, as long as personal jurisdiction is not improper, and the state venue statute doesn’t dictate a particular forum for the lawsuit, a plaintiff’s lawyer can pursue the case anywhere he chooses,” the report states.

St. Louis also has become a recent hotspot for asbestos litigation as its docket continues to grow.

The report notes that just 67 asbestos lawsuits were filed in 2010. But by 2014 and 2015, St. Louis had the fifth largest asbestos docket in the country with about 230 cases filed per year.

The court saw approximately 133 new asbestos lawsuits filed in the first half of 2016.

What stands out more than the number of cases filed are the multi-million-dollar asbestos verdicts.

The report states that a 2014 Supreme Court decision striking down a reform statute that would have limited punitive damages may be the link to a recent $4.1 million asbestos award in January and an $11.5 million asbestos award in July.

In comparison, while the Madison County Circuit Court is considered the nation’s busiest asbestos docket, the jurisdiction hasn’t seen a plaintiff’s verdict in years.

However, St. Louis did see one defense verdict in September after a month-long asbestos trial against Ford Motor Company, Volkswagen Group of America Inc. and Honeywell International.

The report also considers St. Louis as the worst Judicial Hellhole based on “meritless consumer class actions.”

Citing a study by Emory Univeristy law professor Joanna Shepherd, ATRA argues that St. Louis is also a Judicial Hellhole because local lawyers use the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act to file meritless class actions, “hoping to avoid potentially less sympathetic federal courts” by seeking less than the $5 million standard for triggering federal jurisdiction.

These cases include allegations of misleading labels on food products.

ATRA is hopeful that a new Missouri Supreme Court ruling limiting damages in wrongful death claims and newly elected governor Eric Greitens could bring reform to Missouri courts, including St. Louis.

Cook, Madison and St. Clair Counties

Maintaining a yearly spot on the Judicial Hellholes list, Cook, Madison and St. Clair Counties were combined this year to make up the sixth Judicial Hellhole

“For far too long, Madison and St. Clair Counties have been a magnet for personal injury lawyers and plaintiffs from all over the country who clog our courts with junk lawsuits that have nothing to do with the Metro-East, all in the hopes of striking it rich playing our region’s plaintiff-friendly lawsuit lottery,” Akin stated. “Greedy personal injury lawyers have turned the ‘Land of Lincoln’ into the ‘Land of Lawsuits,’ and that is hurting job creation efforts in the Metro-East and throughout Illinois.”

According to the report, Cook County hosts roughly two-thirds of the state’s major civil litigation while only 40 percent of Illinoisans live within the county.

ATRA notes that the county’s medical malpractice litigation data shows that Illinois led its Midwest neighbors with $258 million medical liability payouts in 2015, which was up $49.7 million from its 2014 total payouts.

In June, Cook County saw its largest medical liability verdict in history when a jury entered a $53 million verdict against the University of Chicago Medical Center in a suit involving a child’s cerebral palsy.

Chicago also is seeing a spike in “drive-by lawsuits,” which often involve claims alleging technical violations of disability access requirements. These suits are typically brought against small business that opt to settle the claims rather than pay the money it would take to fight the suit.

ATRA also took issue with Cook County’s judges.

“The latest major embarrassment came this past Election Day when county voters elected Rhonda Crawford to the bench,” the report states. “Crawford is under indictment for posing as a judge and presiding over traffic cases while she was employed as a law clerk. Her license to practice law has been suspended. Yet Crawford still defeated a sitting judge who launched a write-in campaign. While Crawford was the certified winner of the election, the state supreme court has barred her from taking the bench.”

The report states that expert witnesses allowed to testify in Cook County are worse than its judicial selection.

“Judges perform little to no gatekeeping, and juries are often intentionally missed by litigants,” the report states.

However, ATRA praised Cook County Judge Daniel Lynch’s decision to throw out a $25 million personal injury settlement this year after a courthouse intern reported that she’d overheard a law clerk tipping off a plaintiff’s lawyer about the contents of a jury note, which suggested jurors were poised to come back with a defense verdict.

The intern then heard a clerk for the judge presiding over the case tell one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers about what the note said, but waited 27 minutes before informing the defense counsel about the note. By that time, the settlement had been reached between the plaintiffs’ attorneys and the defendant’s insurer.

Shortly after, the jury did return a defense verdict, but the judge found it moot in light of the settlement.

The intern also reportedly told Lynch that the clerk told her that she likes to give an advantage to plaintiffs.

In Madison County, its popular asbestos docket secured its position as a Judicial Hellholes once again.

Asbestos lawsuits accounted for 72 percent of the civil cases filed in Madison County’s courthouse in 2015, with Madison County residents comprising of less than 1 percent of the plaintiffs.

Illinois residents filed roughly 75 of Madison County’s 1,224 asbestos cases in 2015 with just six cases filed on behalf of claimants residing locally in Madison County.

At mid-year, asbestos filings this year were up 10 percent when compared to last year.

“It’s just common sense to require lawsuits filed in Illinois to have an actual connection to Illinois, and yet in Madison County, 99 percent of the asbestos lawsuits filed there are for plaintiffs who do not live in that county,” Akin stated in response. “That is an absurd misuse of our courts and our tax dollars, and it victimizes all of us.”

Madison County judges’ close ties with the plaintiffs’ bar also played a role in the county’s Hellholes ranking.

Specifically, Associate Judge Donald Flack, a former plaintiffs’ asbestos attorney, disclosed relationships with two national asbestos law firms that had developed after he became a judge. And at least 30 cases he filed are active today.

However, ATRA praised Associate Judge Stephen Stobbs’ recent revised case management order governing the Madison County asbestos docket.

“It is the first significant change in more than five years,” the report states.

The revised order limits the number of cases set for trial each year to 780 cases and requires plaintiffs to show proof of an asbestos-related injury before a case can be set for trial.

“These are welcome changes that could increase fairness in asbestos litigation and reduce the incentive for plaintiffs’ lawyers from across the country to pile into Madison County.”

Calling St. Clair County “Madison’s troublesome neighbor,” the report notes that St. Clair County was the nation’s fastest-growing asbestos jurisdiction between 2014 and 2015.

St. Clair County also earned its place as a Judicial Hellhole after Chief Judge John Baricevic and Circuit Judges Robert Haida and Robert LeChien sought election rather than retention. LeChien, whose judicial ability has been challenged in several recent substitution requests, “squeaked” by with a 51 percent win, which earned him the seat but would not have won a bid for retention.

Haida ran unopposed and won his seat, but Baricevic lost to Republican Ron Duebbert.

“Chief Judge Baricevic wanted to change the rules mid-game for his own personal benefit, but like a football referee who blows the whistle on a penalty in a game, voters blew the whistle on this judge for unsportsmanlike judicial conduct and for transparently trying to game the system to his advantage. Voters made a statement on Election Day,” Akin stated. “They are tired of personal injury lawyers and judges gaming the system. They want reform.”

Citing a report by the Illinois Civil Justice League, which questioned if Illinois justice is for sale, the report said wealthy plaintiffs’ attorneys “wield incredible political power” in Illinois. The ICJL report found:

- While the Illinois Trial Lawyers Assocation claims more than 2,000 members in Illinois, its PAC received all of its major contributions from attorneys and firms in the Cook, Madison and St. Clair County areas

- Plaintiffs’ lawyers donated $35.25 million to state politicians over the past 15 years. The top personal injury firms gave more than $7 million to Illinois judicial candidates alone.

- Judicial race spending in Cook, Madison and St. Clair Counties was “significantly higher” than other areas of the state. “Plaintiff-lawyer contributions to county officials’ campaigns also were heaviest in these three counties.”

“It is shenanigans like this that have cemented Madison County’s reputation as a haven for personal injury lawyers and a hell for local businesses who are frequently the targets of these junk lawsuits,” Akin stated. “The Metro-East’s lawsuit abuse epidemic is making it extremely hard to attract new employers and the badly-needed jobs they would bring. We need Governor Rauner’s common sense lawsuit reforms now more than ever.”

The Judicial Hellholes report also states that Gov. Bruce Rauner offers a chance for change as he has “consistently advocated civil justice reforms, including limits on forum shopping, strengthening the reliability of expert testimony, reducing the opportunity for fraud and double-dipping in asbestos litigation, and providing jurors with more information to ensure that damage awards accurately reflect a plaintiff’s medical expenses.”

McLean County

McLean County, Ill., was included on the Judicial Hellholes watch list this year, which stated that the Bloomington jurisdiction “developed a reputation for lopsided rulings that favor plaintiffs in asbestos cases …”

“McLean County verdicts ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars are often reversed by the Fourth District Court of Appeals,” the report states. “The appellate court has tossed out multiple McLean asbestos verdicts that sensationally assert conspiracies with no evidentiary support.”

McLean County’s asbestos docket is growing, but has not yet reached the nation’s top 15 asbestos magnet jurisdictions. However, it is still recognized for its jury verdicts.

The Metro-East St. Louis region joined the ranks yet again as this year’s worst jurisdictions, with St. Louis topping the American Tort Reform Association’s Judicial Hellholes list.

St. Louis is ranked as the worst Judicial Hellhole. It is followed by courts in California; the New York City Asbestos Litigation; Florida Supreme Court and South Florida; courts in New Jersey; Cook, Madison and St. Clair Counties in Illinois; courts in Louisiana; Newport News, Va.; and Hidalgo County, Texas.

The City of St. Louis climbed its way to the top of the Judicial Hellholes list for the first time this year. The entire state of Missouri ranked fourth in last year’s Judicial Hellholes report.

Calling Missouri the “Show Me Your Lawsuits” State, ATRA notes that St. Louis managed to knock California out of its usual number one place with “’fast trials, favorable rulings and big awards.’”

In fact, four of the top six product liability verdicts in the country this year came out of the St. Louis Circuit Court.

ATRA says St. Louis is a hotspot for out-of-state plaintiffs thanks to Missouri’s “lax standard for expert testimony” and laws allowing forum shopping.

The Hellholes report outlines the newest “trap, trash and trick” tactics used by plaintiff’s lawyers to bring roughly 2,100 individual talcum powder claims, which were grouped into about 260 separate lawsuits nationwide.

These cases allege that use of talcum powder causes ovarian cancer. However, the Hellholes report states that no scientifically sound evidence exists.

Approximately two-thirds of the talcum powder claims have been filed in St. Louis, and just three huge verdicts this year total $197 million in awards for plaintiffs form Alabama, South Dakota and California.

ATRA explains that the trap tactic involves plaintiff’s attorneys trapping talc defendants in St. Louis because Missouri “is one of a shrinking minority of holdout states that have yet to adopt the more exacting Daubert standard for expert testimony.”

Daubert provides a standard requiring “judges to act as gatekeepers in reviewing the substance of expert testimony before it is presented to a jury in order to weed out fanciful evidentiary theories that haven’t passed peer-review muster.”

ATRA also credits the state’s venue laws for enabling plaintiff’s attorneys to trap talc cases in St. Louis, which “allows lawsuits to be filed in any county where at least one individual claimant – among the scores comprising a typical talc lawsuit – resided [where] her alleged injury occurred.”

Further, a local “anchor-claimant” can be added for the sole purpose of keeping a litigation in state court.

Plaintiff’s lawyers also avoid the federal Class Action Fairness Act’s threshold for removal to federal court by keeping the plaintiff count under 100.

The tactic involves plaintiff’s firms investing in local TV advertising to “trash” defendants and their products.

“Ostensibly packaged as client solicitations, the incessant ads more practically function as a means to influence potential jurors,” the report states.

For example, Johnson & Johnson talc defendants in plaintiff Tiffany Hogans’ lawsuit filed a motion to change venue in July, seeking to transfer the case to a jurisdiction that is “outside the St. Louis media market and at least 100 miles away in order to minimize the jury taint” from the ads.

The report states that in March alone, 23 percent of all talcum powder litigation ads aired in St. Louis even though the market comprises 1 percent of the national television audience.

What gets lost on the public is that the scientific, medical and regulatory communities say that no relationship between talcum powder and ovarian cancer exists.

ATRA points out that two experts who testified in St. Louis were deemed unqualified to testify in New Jersey, where two talc cases were dismissed in September.

“Nevertheless, defendants’ pleadings to have those so-called experts excluded from St. Louis trials fall on deaf ears. Judges there invariably allow the introduction of this junk science and, with visibly ill women or their surviving loved ones as sympathetic clients, practiced injury lawyers then pluck jurors’ heartstrings and persuade them to come back with outlier verdicts that fly in the face of genuine science,” the report states.

In late June, lame-duck Gov. Jay Nixon vetoed legislation that would have adopted the Daubert standard for expert evidence in Missouri.

“But lawmakers are expected to try again in 2017, and with a newly elected governor who’s less dependent on plaintiff’s bar cash, hope springs eternal,” the report states.

ATRA notes in its report that “junk science” in Missouri courts extends beyond talc suits.

In May 2016, a St. Louis jury returned a $46.5 million verdict against Monsanto in a case alleging three plaintiffs developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma by eating foods contaminated with PCBs. The plaintiffs were residents of Alaska, Michigan and Oklahoma.

Nearly 100 plaintiffs have similar cases pending in St. Louis, with only three from Missouri.

The American Cancer Society argues that most forms of non-Hodgkin lymphoma have no known cause, and lymphomas typically develop as people age.

The Hellholes report states that the “Show Me Your Lawsuits State” became a “litigation tourism hot spot” following a unanimous decision by the state’s Supreme Court in October that “effectively rolls out a welcome mat for out-of-state plaintiffs suing out-of-state defendants over alleged out-of-state injuries.”

In that case, Heartland Title Services and James Day asked the Missouri Supreme Court to prohibit Jackson County Judge Kevin Harrell form dismissing one of the plaintiff’s claims in the circuit court for lack of venue.

The Supreme Court held that venue was proper in any Missouri county when personal and subject matter jurisdiction are established.

“It adopted the plaintiff’s argument that, as long as personal jurisdiction is not improper, and the state venue statute doesn’t dictate a particular forum for the lawsuit, a plaintiff’s lawyer can pursue the case anywhere he chooses,” the report states.

St. Louis also has become a recent hotspot for asbestos litigation as its docket continues to grow.

The report notes that just 67 asbestos lawsuits were filed in 2010. But by 2014 and 2015, St. Louis had the fifth largest asbestos docket in the country with about 230 cases filed per year.

The court saw approximately 133 new asbestos lawsuits filed in the first half of 2016.

What stands out more than the number of cases filed are the multi-million-dollar asbestos verdicts.

The report states that a 2014 Supreme Court decision striking down a reform statute that would have limited punitive damages may be the link to a recent $4.1 million asbestos award in January and an $11.5 million asbestos award in July.

In comparison, while the Madison County Circuit Court is considered the nation’s busiest asbestos docket, the jurisdiction hasn’t seen a plaintiff’s verdict in years.

However, St. Louis did see one defense verdict in September after a month-long asbestos trial against Ford Motor Company, Volkswagen Group of America Inc. and Honeywell International.

The report also considers St. Louis as the worst Judicial Hellhole based on “meritless consumer class actions.”

Citing a study by Emory Univeristy law professor Joanna Shepherd, ATRA argues that St. Louis is also a Judicial Hellhole because local lawyers use the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act to file meritless class actions, “hoping to avoid potentially less sympathetic federal courts” by seeking less than the $5 million standard for triggering federal jurisdiction.

These cases include allegations of misleading labels on food products.

ATRA is hopeful that a new Missouri Supreme Court ruling limiting damages in wrongful death claims and newly elected governor Eric Greitens could bring reform to Missouri courts, including St. Louis.