Submitted by Experience Not Logic Blog

I feel a special connection with stories about tort in the US. It has a lot to do with seeing Bill Lerach speak at my school about the justice he wrought in the world, pre-incarceration of course. Note to aspiring class action tort attorneys, it is not legal to give kickbacks from legal fees to your buddies that have standing any time there is corporate governance problems just because they own 1 share of every stock in the world. Bounties to named plaintiffs for 40 cents on the dollar to the attorney is not legal; besides you can never have as much style as Dog.

In the Sunday New York Times there is an article on tort reform by Jonathan Glater, To the Trenches: The Tort War is Raging On. The article is basically about how and why some dudes (that link is blocked here, I assume it’s real) want to make civil lawsuits easier to file and win, and how and why other dudes (FYI, not blocked) are trying to make civil lawsuits harder to file and win. Interesting stuff, but American politics at its worst.

Instead, I want to focus on a single paragraph of the lengthy article that had some links to data that I’ve been wondering about since Civil Procedure. We’re bombarded by anecdotes from our professors with practice experience that about how there are certain jurisdictions that are favorable to plaintiffs and certain jurisdictions that are favorable to defendants. I always wanted to know the specifics, now, thanks to the Times, I do.

You can check out the Lawsuit Climate 2008 prepared by the US Chamber of Commerce with the best State to get sued in at #1, Delaware, and the worst State to get sued in, West Virginia. And the American Tort Reform Association’s compilation, Judicial Hellholes 2007, is not to be missed! They use pejorative terms and fill us lay-folk in on all fancy attorney slang (Los Angeles used to be known as “The Bank”).

What’s this have to do with China? Well, some of China’s courts are becoming more sophisticated at a faster pace than others, and venue should never be overlooked, even in a country with a legal system as young as China’s (drawing a blank on where I sourced this knowledge, something specific related to IP with Beijing Int. and Shanghai Courts being particularly sophisticated for IP disputes. I found this, but that ain’t it.)