L.A.’s plaintiff-friendly courts a top U.S. spot for big money lawsuits

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Los Angeles County Superior Court remains one of the busiest venues for civil litigation in the nation, with caseloads over the last four years driven by complex litigation against Catholic Church entities and cases involving public utilities and government agencies.

That’s the description of the court’s civil docket painted by data from reports released this week by the legal analytics platform Lex Machina. The company’s data indicated that two cases handled by the Superior Court in 2023 through 2025 each produced a damages award amounting to nearly $1 billion.

Moore v. Johnson & Johnson, a case involving a plaintiff who died of mesothelioma after decades of using J&J’s talc-based baby powder product, led to a jury award of $16 million in compensatory damages and punitive damages of $950 million, a Lex Machina report on law firm activities states.

And in the case of Solar Eclipse Investment Fund v. Cohn Reznick LLP, involving claims about sham leasing agreements for mobile solar generators, a jury found Ahern Rentals liable for $950 million in damages.

"Los Angeles Superior Court continues to be a focal point for high-stakes civil litigation,” Lex Machina’s legal marketing manager, Adam Masarek, said in a statement emailed to the Southern California Record. “Between 2023 and 2025, juries awarded more than $2.4 billion in principal damages, a figure that reflects both the court's heavy caseload and the significant disputes that make their way to trial.”

Another of the platform’s reports released this week – When Complex Became Common: The Rise of CRC 3.4 Filings in Los Angeles Superior Court – found that the types of civil litigation handled by the court since 2022 have dramatically changed due to a shift toward complex litigation under California Rule of Court 3.400, or CRC 3.4.

“In Los Angeles Superior Court, CRC 3.4 designations have become increasingly common across employment, institutional tort, utility and public-entity litigation,” the report states.

The company’s data charts two waves of CRC 3.4 growth in the Superior Court’s caseloads. The first spike took place in 2022 as plaintiffs filed cases against Catholic Church entities and local government defendants. These lawsuits were driven by state Assembly Bill 218, which extended the statute of limitations on claims involving child sexual abuse and provided a “lookout window” for previously barred claims.

A second wave of CRC 3.4 litigation began in 2024 involving employment lawsuits and major disputes whose parties included utilities and public entities, the report said.

“The result is a fundamental shift in the composition of the court’s civil docket,” Lex Machina reported. “Once associated primarily with large commercial disputes and coordinated mass torts, complex litigation is now arising from a much broader range of case types.”

The cases often dealt with wage-and-hour disputes, intricate class actions and disputes involving the Private Attorneys General Act. (PAGA), according to the data.

The top plaintiff law firms based on the Superior Court’s damages awards included Dean Omar Branham Shirley, Dorta Law, Parris Law Firm, Felderstein Fitzgerald Willoughby Pascuzzi & Rios, Fox Rothschild, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, The Hyman Law Firm and Thomas, Alexander & Forrester.

The top defendants’ law firms, based on numbers of bench trials and jury verdicts, were the California Department of Justice, Law Offices of Robert S. Gitmeid & Associates and Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith.