Matt Blunt Oppresses the Litigious, Their Attorneys

Missouri's lawsuit limits toughest in nation:

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.

But one man stood out above all - not because of his alleged wrongdoing, but because of where he lived.

Marvin Kaiser, the chief financial officer of the nation's leading lead producer Doe Run Co., lived in the city of 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 in a split decision last year 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 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. Had the law been in effect for the Doe Run case, attorneys would have had to file it in Jefferson County, where the lead smelter is.

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 at the request of The Associated Press.

Undoubtedly, this is just one of Governor Blunt's attempts to restrict the rights of attorneys to pursue their lottery ambitions and the rights of the aggrieved to collect pennies on the dollar for injuries both real and imagined.