The rise in nuclear verdicts threatens every business and individual in Pennsylvania. Philadelphia is the epicenter of the nuclear verdict trend making it the preferred forum of plaintiffs’ attorneys. Loose venue rules allow defendants all across Pennsylvania to be dragged to Philadelphia’s notoriously hostile court system.
While plaintiffs’ lawyers would like us to believe that their talent at persuasion leads to outrageous verdicts, in fact, a variety of factors both inside and outside the courtroom play a significant role in the verdict explosion. These factors include abusive litigation tactics; a lack of legal standards for calculating noneconomic damages; a significant increase in plaintiffs’ attorney advertising; and the threshold for the admissibility of expert testimony.
PCCJR Executive Director Curt Schroder recently delved into the various factors fueling a rising trend of nuclear verdicts in Philadelphia in a recent opinion column in The Legal Intelligencer. “Nuclear verdicts harm Pennsylvania’s economy, overcompensating plaintiffs and enriching counsel at the expense of the rest of society—who ultimately foot the bill for these outsized verdicts in the form of higher prices for goods or services,” Schroder wrote. “Pennsylvania is already a relatively inhospitable forum for businesses. Nuclear verdicts only make Pennsylvania’s business climate worse.”
You can read the piece in its entirety here.