In an effort to get their lawsuits into counties where juries are likely to give large awards, plaintiff trial lawyers have gone to great lengths to file cases in a handful of rural Alabama counties. SB 305, part of the recent package of bills passed in the Senate, attempts to end the practice of filing lawsuits in the most generous county by making the reasonable requirement that lawsuits are filed in the county that makes the most sense. The county where a substantial part of the omissions or events giving rise to the claim took place. The county where the plaintiff resided at the time of the occurrence, so long as the corporation does business in that county by an agent. For actions involving multiple plaintiffs, SB 305 requires that venue be proper for each plaintiff.
Current law requires that venue be proper only for the named plaintiff.
All of these reforms provide a common sense approach to determining where a lawsuit can be filed. Class action reforms add fairness to Alabama s legal system. According to the Federal Judicial Conference s Advisory Committee on Civil Rules, defendants are facing up to a 1,100 percent increase in class action lawsuits nationwide. Alabama is no exception to this alarming trend, and like the venue situation, the problem is most apparent in a handful of pro-plaintiff counties in the state. This term refers to the problem of trial judges allowing a group of plaintiffs to move forward as a class without the defendant being heard on the issue, and often before the defendant has even received notice of the underlying lawsuit.