CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- West Virginia is no longer the worst "judicial hellhole" in the country, but it still ranks second, according to the annual report released Tuesday.

Almost every year since 2002, the American Tort Reform Foundation, an offshoot of the American Tort Reform Association, has ranked West Virginia as having among the nation's worst legal climates for civil cases. South Florida ranked as the nation's top "judicial hellhole" this year.

"[U]ntil West Virginia adopts systemic reforms or shows consistent evidence of fair rulings, it is unlikely to shed its reputation as a Judicial Hellhole," the report states.

But critics were quick to criticize the report as propaganda, saying it is part of a concerted campaign by large companies to avoid legal responsibility for bad acts.

"This report is not a legitimate analysis of West Virginia's courts or our business climate. It's a humbug, a piece of propaganda release by [ATRA] -- a front group for big money corporate special interests," said Timothy C. Bailey, president of the West Virginia Association for Justice, formerly the West Virginia Trial Lawyers Association, in a prepared statement.

"ATRA was created expressly for the purpose of lobbying for immunity when corporations break the law. It is continuing its unrelenting attach on West Virginia and our civil justice system because our courts are the one place where these corporate wrongdoers can still be held accountable for their negligence and misconduct."

The Center for Justice & Democracy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan consumer advocacy group based in New York, says in a news release that ATRA's members "are largely Fortune 500 companies with a direct financial stake in restricting lawsuits," including representatives from the tobacco, insurance, chemical, auto and pharmaceutical companies.

Locally, the West Virginia Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse organization posted a link to the report on its Web site, calling it an "important reminder of the need for legal reform in the Mountain State."

"Reforms aimed at fixing the state's one-of-a-kind medical monitoring standard, reducing fraudulent lawsuit filings, and bringing accountability to the Attorney General's office would also put West Virginia on the path to greater job creation," the site stated.

Last year, in an academic paper published in the West Virginia Law Review titled "Judicial Hellholes, Lawsuit Climates and Bad Social Science: Lessons from West Virginia," Elizabeth Thornburg, a law professor at Southern Methodist University, argued that ATRA tries to scare the public into believing that the legal system is unfair.

"[T]he point of the hellhole campaign is not to create an accurate snapshot of reality. The point of the hellhole campaign is to motivate legislators and judges to make law that will favor repeat corporate defendants and their insurers, and to spur voters to vote for those judges and legislators who will do so," Thornburg wrote.

"As long as ATRA believes that West Virginia politics is vulnerable to this type of pressure, and as long as it seeks additional changes in the law or the judiciary, West Virginia's hellhole stardom will continue."

Thornburg's study concludes that the hellhole studies rely on anecdotes and mischaracterizations to advance ATRA political agenda. The reports are written so that opinions are presented as factually based, she wrote.

"For example, in the 2005 and 2006 reports the text states that West Virginia courts are a 'favorite for wealthy personal injury lawyers.' If the reader skips 37 pages to the endnotes, she learns that this quotation is from a piece by Randy Coleman published in the Charleston Daily Mail. If a person has access to Coleman's op-ed piece or does independent research, she can learn that Coleman was affiliated with West Virginia Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse (WVCALA), a group whose extensive public relations campaign has done much to popularize the perception that the state is a judicial hellhole."

The new report approves of two recommendations by the Independent Commission on Judicial Reform as a "point of light" in West Virginia: the creation of an intermediate court of appeals and the automatic right of appeal for all litigants.

Reach Andrew Clevenger at acleven...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-1723.