Lawsuit limits to begin in August

JEFFERSON CITY — When attorneys for several residents of a rural town along the Mississippi River filed a property damage lawsuit alleging contamination from a lead smelter, they cast a wide legal net that eventually included 11 defendants from across the nation.

One man, Marvin Kaiser, the chief financial officer of the nation’s leading lead producer, Doe Run Co., lived in St. Louis. And that’s where plaintiffs’ attorneys wanted to try their case.

Doe Run fought the filing all the way to the Missouri Supreme Court, which ruled the case could go forward in St. Louis based on Kaiser’s connection.

The ruling became part of the rallying cry for business groups outraged over “venue shopping,” in which attorneys look for whatever legal link they can find to file lawsuits in places they view most preferable.

Missouri’s Republican-led legislature and the governor responded with a new law — effective Aug. 28 — that will require all lawsuits seeking money for alleged wrongdoing to be filed where the victim was first injured. Missouri’s new venue law appears to be the most restrictive in the nation, according to a review completed last week by the National Center for State Courts.

Tort lawsuits include medical mistakes, vehicle accidents, faulty products, property damage, wrongful death and slip-and-fall cases.

The new law will mean that if two city motorists get into a car wreck in rural Missouri, they must travel back to where the accident happened to sue each other.

The current law contains a wider variety of options, allowing lawsuits to be filed anywhere one of the defendants lives or can be found. Opponents of Missouri’s new law contend it is an extreme example in a disturbing trend. A 2002 Pennsylvania law, for example, requires medical malpractice cases to be filed where the alleged malpractice occurred.

But proponents of Missouri’s law say it brings balance to a court system that had tipped in favor of money-hungry plaintiffs’ attorneys.

Denver attorney Kevin Hannon represents Herculaneum residents in the lawsuit against Doe Run that went to the Supreme Court. He said attorneys sought to file the cases in St. Louis because it is more convenient for lawyers, and because the city’s large court system is well-equipped to handle complex lawsuits.