Paradise lost, thank goodness

Plaintiffs attorneys used think that multi-million verdicts from Madison County juries were a lock. But the Anita O'Connell case is the latest evidence that this so-called plaintiffs paradise is becoming paradise lost.
A jury on Wednesday refused to give O'Connell, an 84-year-old woman dying of mesothelioma, any money in her asbestos case.
It's the second big fat zero. In a case tried in June, a widow whose husband died of mesothelioma also got nothing.
But it is a dramatic departure from the past. In asbestos trials held between 2000 and 2003, the judgments were $16 million, $34.1 million and $250 million.
Maybe jurors are fed up with people who don't live in Madison County -- O'Connell and the widow both were from Northern Illinois -- traipsing here in search of big judgments.
Maybe they are tired of dubious legal claims. The widow was suing GE, even though it didn't even make the product that contained the asbestos. O'Connell said she got the fatal lung cancer from laundering her son's clothes in the late 1960s and '70s after he used a compound that contained asbestos. Even if that sounded possible, testimony called into question whether the family business had even used the product.
Maybe they are embarrassed by their court's reputation as among the worst in the nation.
Whatever the reasons, it's great if plaintiffs attorneys now have to wonder what a Madison County jury will do. If the county isn't on their list the next time they go venue shopping, all the better.