(The Center Square) – New York has retained its dubious ranking as a “lawsuit inferno” according to a new report, which cites the passage of trial lawyer friendly bills and other state legislation over the past year.
The American Tort Reform Association’s 2025 “heat check” report, released on Tuesday, listed New York among five states deserving of the label lawsuit “inferno,” including Illinois, Virginia, Florida and Colorado. It’s the second consecutive year the Empire State has earned the dubious title.
“New York lawmakers use the same tactics year after year – pushing bills that the governor repeatedly vetoes,” Tiger Joyce, president of ATRA, said in a statement. “It’s a vicious cycle and a broken record. Instead of learning from past failures, they waste time and ignore the real issues facing the state.”
Joyce said New Yorkers are paying the third-highest “tort tax” in the nation – more than $10,139 for a family of four, or $2,534 per person. Collectively, the litigation costs the state nearly $5 billion in lost revenue with an estimated 427,700 jobs lost as a result of frivolous lawsuits, he said.
The report singled out a Democratic proposal approved by the state Legislature in June, which calls for expanding New York’s nearly 180-year-old law governing wrongful deaths to allow families to seek emotional damages.
Under the current law, they can only sue for financial damages. Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul has vetoed three previous versions of the bill, most recently in December, but lawmakers sent it back to her desk.
“This expansion poses serious economic risks and could make New York an outlier nationally by allowing damages for emotional loss in wrongful death cases – especially with no clear limits on the size of those awards,” the report’s authors said. “While intended to help grieving families, the bill could result in higher costs, increased litigation and greater financial strain on municipalities, healthcare providers, and consumers.”
New York’s legal system is consistently ranked among the worst in the nation in the association’s annual “Judicial Hellholes” reports. New York, New York City or Albany have been included among those named “Judicial Hellholes” for nearly 15 years, according to the ATRA.
Tom Stebbins, executive director of the Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York, said as states like Georgia seek to reduce the burden on businesses and individual taxpayers by passing “common sense” lawsuit reforms, New York’s Legislature “continues to push the trial lawyer lobby’s agenda which leaves the rest of us footing the bill.”
“Not only did Albany pass a slate of pro-lawsuit, trial lawyer friendly legislation this year, lawmakers failed to address the gruesome ‘fraudemic’ of intentionally-caused car and construction site accidents that forces migrants to undergo unnecessary surgeries, driving up insurance costs and making our work sites and streets less safe,” he said in a statement.
