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When the American Tort Reform Foundation launched its “Judicial Hellholes” program, the organization wanted to highlight “places where judges systematically apply laws and court procedures in an unfair and unbalanced manner.”

In recent years, Oklahoma has been mentioned repeatedly in “judicial hellhole” updates due to the actions of the Oklahoma Supreme Court.

In 2020, Oklahoma was highlighted by the American Tort Reform Foundation after lawmakers failed to revise state law in response to the Oklahoma Supreme Court striking down limits on noneconomic damages. Oklahoma lawmakers had previously voted to restrict court awards for noneconomic damages, such as awards for pain and suffering, to $350,000 per person in personal injury cases, but allowed unlimited awards for recovery of other damages such as lost wages and medical expenses. The court struck down the $350,000 cap on noneconomic damages.

The American Tort Reform Foundation called the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling “blatant overreach by the court.”

“Most courts have respected the prerogative of legislatures to enact reasonable limits on awards for pain and suffering,” the foundation’s report stated. “The Oklahoma Supreme Court did not.”

The foundation’s report for 2019-2020 warned, “Throughout the first half of 2019, the Oklahoma Supreme Court significantly diminished the role of the legislature with regard to civil justice policy by handing down activist opinions that either strike down existing laws or interpret them with a complete disregard for their plain meaning.”

In addition to striking down the limit on noneconomic damages, the report noted that the Oklahoma Supreme Court had “expanded a treble (triple) damages statute, which it described as ‘absurd.’”

The report also noted that in March 2019, the Oklahoma Supreme Court “once again undermined the Legislature’s civil justice reform efforts by shifting the burden of proof in workers’ compensation cases onto the employer.”

The case centered on a “slip-and-fall” incident in which a nursing assistant injured her knee. At trial, the nurse acknowledged that her fall was not caused by any slippery surface at the facility.

An administrative law judge, the Workers Compensation Commission sitting en banc, and a three-judge panel of the Court of Civil Appeals unanimously concluded that the assistant failed to prove that her knee injury was work-related.

But the Oklahoma Supreme Court “reversed the denial of benefits, finding no credible evidence that the claimant had a pre-existing injury and improperly shifted the burden of proof to show a medical condition is work-related from the employee to the employer,” the foundation noted.

In 2019, an American Tort Reform Foundation press release stated that the “problems that we have identified with Oklahoma’s legal environment are now so troubling that we are adding it to our ‘Judicial Hellholes’ list.” 

In 2013, the American Tort Reform Foundation noted that Oklahoma lawmakers had recently convened in a brief special session to pass 23 separate bills aimed at deterring frivolous lawsuits after the Oklahoma Supreme Court had struck down those same laws because they were originally passed in a single bill.

“The court majority absurdly reasoned the package violated the state constitution’s requirement that legislation deal only with a ‘single subject’—as though civil justice reforms don’t comprise a single subject,” the American Tort Reform Foundation noted.

At that time, American Tort Reform president Tiger Joyce said, “Every Oklahoman who is tired of costly lawsuit abuse should feel insulted by the high court majority and its apparent willingness, on such specious constitutional grounds, to obstruct the will of the people.  Lawmakers should act quickly . . . to reverse this injustice, and the public should recall this decision and the activist inclinations of the majority justices when their names next appear on the retention ballot.”

The Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs has created the Oklahoma Judicial Scorecard, which provides information on members of the Oklahoma Supreme Court and their rulings. The Oklahoma Judicial Scorecard can be viewed at https://ocpathink.org/judicial-scorecard.