Evidence that the U.S. Chamber's State Rankings are Crap
As you may know, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce puts out a bogus study every year that purportedly ranks the civil justice system in every state. The rankings are determined by surveying various corporate attorneys and asking their opinions as to the fairness of every state's justice system. To put that in perspective, it wouldn't be much different than asking career criminals to rate the fairness of every state's criminal justice system. But I digress.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the U.S. Chamber's study is that a state's ranking doesn't seem to change very much even when a state passes the "reform" measures advocated by the Chamber. For example:
Notwithstanding the ballyhoo when tort reform was enacted by the 2004 Legislature that it cured what special interest groups called Mississippi's cesspool of jackpot justice, it seems those same groups now don't rate the state's reforms very highly...
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, after pouring $1 million into Mississippi's 2000 Supreme Court races to elect its handpicked candidates. in 2003 rated Mississippi 50th in civil justice climate...
Mind you, in 2002 under Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, state lawmakers enacted a series of tort measures sought by the insurance industry. One limited non-economic damages to $500,000 until July 1, 2011, and scaled the limit up to $1 million by 2017; another reduced to two years the time in which suits could be brought against nursing homes; and another granted liability immunity to a number of health care providers.
But the reforms had not satisfied the U.S. Chamber and some other groups. Republican candidates in 2003 latched onto "tort reform" as a catch-phrase to get elected.
It didn't take long for newly-inaugurated Republican Gov. Haley Barbour, who campaigned for tort reform, to get the 2004 Legislature to do the Chamber's bidding.
Barbour won enactment of a fixed $500,000 cap on pain and suffering damages in medical malpractice cases and a $1 million cap on all others, and also gave retailers a shield against product liability lawsuits...
But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce itself has now let the air out of the Mississippi tort reformers' balloon. Recently the Chamber's Institute for Legal Reforms (which initially stirred the pot on reform by ranking Mississippi 50th in 2003) in its 2007 ranking put the state's legal climate at only 49th.
Source: U.S. Chamber lets the air out of Miss. tort reformers' balloon - The Clarion-Ledger
Mississippi passed damage caps, elected pro-business anti-consumer judges, granted various immunities, and reduced statutes of limitations and only increased from 50th to 49th? States ranked far higher that Mississippi in the Chamber's study have far fewer "reforms" in place. Since there doesn't appear to be any correlation between a state's ranking and it's "reform" measures, the study should not be used as evidence that a state needs to pass any of the "reform" measures pushed by the Chamber.
Cross-posted to TortDeform
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