This report documents litigation abuses in areas identified by the American Tort Reform Foundation (ATRF) as “Judicial Hellholes.”® The basic purposes of this report are: 1) to identify areas of the country where the scales of justice are radically out of balance and 2) to provide solutions for restoring balance, accuracy and predictability to the American civil justice system.

Most judges do a diligent and fair job for modest pay. But their good reputation and goal of balanced justice in America are undermined by the small number of jurists who do not dispense justice fairly and impartially.

Judicial Hellholes are places where judges systematically apply laws and court procedures in an unfair and unbalanced manner, generally against defendants in civil lawsuits. The jurisdictions discussed in this report are not the only Judicial Hellholes in the United States; they are merely among the worst offenders. These cities, counties or judicial districts are frequently identified by members of the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) and individuals familiar with the litigation. The report considers only civil cases; it does not reflect in any way on the criminal justice system.

Though entire states may occasionally be cited as “Hellholes,” it is usually only specific counties or courts in a given state that warrant this citation. In many states, including some that have received national attention, the majority of the courts are fair and the negative publicity is a result of a few bad apples. Because judges generally set the rules in personal injury lawsuits, and judicial rulings are so determinative in the outcome of individual cases, it may only take one or two judges who stray from the law in a given jurisdiction to give it a reputation as a Judicial Hellhole.

Although ATRF annually surveys ATRA members and others with firsthand experience in Judicial Hellholes as part of the research process, the report has become so widely known that ATRF continually receives and gathers information provided by a variety of additional sources.

To the extent possible, ATRF has tried to be specific in explaining why defendants are unable to receive fair trials within these jurisdictions. Because ATRA members may face lawsuits in these jurisdictions, some members are justifiably concerned about reprisals if their names and cases were identified in this report – a sad commentary about the Hellholes in and of itself. Defense lawyers are “loathe” to get on the bad side of the local trial bar and “almost always ask to remain anonymous in newspaper stories.”5

ATRF interviewed individuals familiar with litigation in the Judicial Hellholes and verified their observations through independent research of press accounts, studies, court dockets and judicial branch statistics, and other publicly available information. Citations for these sources can be found in the more than 400 endnotes following this report.

The focus of this report is squarely on the conduct of judges who do not apply the law evenhandedly to all litigants, and do not conduct trials in a fair and balanced manner. But as scrutiny of the judiciary by the public, the media and the other two branches of government has been heightened in recent years, thanks in part to this annual report and others like it, the adaptive plaintiffs’ bar has begun to work additional angles.