Texas ascends from the holes of hell, according to American Tort Reform Association metrics

The American Tort Reform Association, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization, today released its eighth annual report on what it calls "judicial hellholes." By surveying ATRA members and researching media accounts, academic and public policy studies, court dockets, judicial branch statistics and other publicly available information, the study's authors determined that Texas as a whole no longer deserved a moniker identifying it as one of the nation's "most unfair civil court jurisdictions." The new ATRA report did keep specific regions of Texas, the Gulf Goast and the Rio Grande Valley, on a "watch list" of "judicial hellholes." Since the roster's inception, Texas had gotten off the list only once in 2002. Where were the hotspots, so to speak, this year? New York City and the appellate courts of New Mexico joined the list of "hellholes" for the first time. Among the "perennials" ATRA reported were: South Florida; West Virginia; Cook County, Illinois; and Atlantic County, New Jersey.

-- Miriam Rozen