Madison County, Ill., once again topped the American Tort Reform Association's list of "judicial hellholes," legal jurisdictions where litigants, guided by their attorneys, file suit in hopes of huge jury awards.

The Washington, D.C.-based group, a virtual Who's Who of American big business, annually names its list of what it calls the worst court jurisdictions in terms of corporate defendants' chances of a fair trial. In citing Madison County as the worst jurisdiction for the second year in a row, the group called it a "national haven" for asbestos claims, something of intense interest to the insurance industry.

Asbestos manufacturers and their insurers for years have been trying to get a bill passed in Congress that would end all U.S. asbestos litigation. Lawsuits have bankrupted some 70 companies, and negotiators led by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., now are trying to salvage a bill that would end asbestos lawsuits and establish a compensation fund for victims.

Asbestos litigation "is an overwhelming problem and Congress needs to deal with it," ATRA President Sherman Joyce said at a press conference the week of Dec. 13. Of class-action reform, another insurer-backed measure, Joyce said it "should be even stronger" than it is now. The bill, as it stands, moves most class actions to federal court.

Insurers such as State Farm, New York Life and the Physician Insurers Association of America are among the 300 members of the ATRA group.

Despite Madison County's reappearance on ATRA's "judicial hellholes" list, the group said it considered overall tort trends to be favorable since last year, mainly because of improvements in the Mississippi court system and other states.

In addition to Madison County, nearby St. Clair County, Ill., made the group's list, as did Hampton County, S.C.; Jefferson County, Texas; Orleans Parish, La.; Philadelphia; Los Angeles; all of South Florida and the entire state of West Virginia. Oklahoma, the Utah Supreme Court, the District of Columbia and New Mexico's appellate courts earned "dishonorable mentions" from the group.

ATRA pulled Jefferson County, Miss., off the list after what it called "a series of remarkable and positive changes" that had taken place there.

One group, the New York-based Center for Justice and Democracy, took issue with ATRA's "judicial hellholes" report, saying in a statement that it is "nothing more than an intimidation tactic against judges who are not beholden to corporate interests."

(By Chris Grier, Washington bureau manager, BestWeek: Chris.Grier@ambest.com)