Delaware Dethroned

“Delaware no longer lives up to its nickname as the 'First State,'” said a statement from ILR President Lisa Rickard. “As the competition between states to enact legal reforms gets tighter, Delaware is losing ground.”

The report ranked Louisiana as the worst state for corporate litigation, followed by Missouri, Illinois, California and Florida.

Speaking at a Chamber business conference, Rickard said that Louisiana's low ranking was mainly due to being “home to one of the worst lawsuit jurisdictions in the country, New Orleans.”

Missouri, Rickard said, “has allowed junk science in their courtrooms, and tens of thousands of people with no connection to the state having brought lawsuits there.” She said the state passed some major legal reforms this year “and hopefully we'll see Missouri turn itself around.”

She called California a “nightmare in just about everything for business.” Of Illinois, she simply said, “ditto.”

She criticized Florida for dropping from the middle of the rankings to an all-time low of 46th. “Florida has a problem with [its] judges and [its] laws, and an abundance of some of the most aggressive plaintiffs lawyers in the entire country,” Rickard added.

But she praised West Virginia, which still ranks a lowly 45th, for pulling itself up from the bottom of the list for the first time. Until now, it has always been ranked 49th or 50th, she said.

Former U.S. Sen. John Sununu, keynote speaker at the Chamber conference, said the rankings are important because of their economic impact. Though not a lawyer, Sununu serves as an adjunct senior policy adviser at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in Washington, DC.

Legal reform and higher rankings can help “improve competitiveness, job growth, business climate and economic opportunity in your state,” Sununu said.

The ILR survey confirmed Sununu's statements. Some 85% of respondents said a state's lawsuit environment is likely to impact decisions about where to locate or expand their business.

Along with the survey, ILR also released its latest version of a study on how states can improve their lawsuit climates. The study, “101 Ways to Improve State Legal Systems,” lists key legal reforms that states can adopt and includes specific examples recently enacted by some states.

Participants in the Harris poll were a national sample of 1,321 in-house general counsel, senior litigators or attorneys, and other senior executives at companies with at least $100 million in annual revenue. Participants indicated they were knowledgeable about litigation matters and had first-hand, recent litigation experience in each state they evaluated.

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Sue Reisinger writes for Corporate Counsel, an ALM sibling publication of this newsletter. She can be reached at [email protected].