West Virginia's Republican Candidate for Governor Decries State's Legal System

07/11/11

Interestingly, 'Wild and Wonderful' West Virginia has, according to the article, been repeatedly ranked last by the Institute for Legal Reform - a national campaign, aimed at making America's legal system simpler, fairer and faster for all - in its ranking of state legal climates. And the American Tort Reform Foundation - the only national organization dedicated exclusively to reforming the civil justice system - actually referred to the state as one of the worst ''judicial hellholes'' in the country.


Maloney says the many aspects of West Virginia's current legal system deter businesses from locating to the state. He made note of the fact that following the sale of International Coal Group, no Fortune 500 companies are currently based in West Virginia, and pointed to the court system as the reason.

In recent days, Maloney and other West Virginians, including lawyers, business owners and medical professionals, held a discussion about the need for a comprehensive civil justice reform package. This would include, according to the article, creating an intermediate appellate court and the passage of a comparative fault law, which would control ''no-proof, no-problem'' type lawsuits, and limit out-of-control punitive awards, among other things.

Maloney was quoted as saying in the legalnewsline.com article: ''As an example of one major problem, West Virginia is the only state in America without a meaningful right of appeal. Businesses and jobs have fled West Virginia because of this injustice, while citizens have been forced to fight to have their voices heard by the courts.''

He continued. ''…the intermediate appellate court, we can do that fairly easily politically. Some of the other ideas - such as joint and several compensation and medical monitoring - could be trickier. But we could package them together as legal fairness reform. Some lawyers won't like me for saying or doing all of this, but we have to do it. I think this is the number one problem holding our state back.''

Directly countering Maloney's remarks, Chris Stadelman, a spokesman for Earl Ray Tomblin's campaign was quoted as saying: ''Over the past eight months, he [Tomblin] has helped recruit Macy's to the Eastern Panhandle and participated in expansions at Alcon, Orrick and firms with coal and natural gas operations, among others. Investments such as those are why our state was ranked among the top five nationally in GDP growth last year. Earl Ray Tomblin has been a leader in improving the state's legal and business climate, passing workers' compensation and medical malpractice reforms. Tomblin's work in pushing through changes in workers' comp has seen injured workers get the treatment they need and get back to work faster while significantly reducing premiums, and he was the leader of the physicians mutual and medical malpractice reforms that have kept doctors in West Virginia.''

The special gubernatorial election will take place this fall. While the topic of legal reform is perhaps, in part, political leverage, the call for legal reform is sweeping - not just in West Virginia, but nationally, and is evidenced by the gaining momentum of organizations such as the Institute for Legal Reform, the American Tort Reform Foundation, and Common Good, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization founded in 2002 with the mission of rebuilding reliable legal structures that will enable Americans to use their common sense.