WASHIGNTON Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, isnt the least bit lovely when it comes to its civil justice system, at least according to a national tort reform advocacy group.

The American Tort Reform Association is out with its annual "judicial hellholes" report, and Philadelphia again tops the list as having the civil justice system that is the most unfair and out of balance in the nation.

Civil justice problems throughout California and West Virginia earn those states the second- and third-place rankings, respectively. And auto-accident fraud racketeers helped place perennial judicial hellhole South Florida in fourth place.

Two neighboring rural counties in Illinois, Madison and St. Clair, return to the Judicial Hellholes list in the fifth spot this year after recent civil justice reform efforts there appear to have stalled.

New York City and Albany together claim sixth place as petty lawsuits remain the norm and personal injury lawyers block reform.

An ongoing half-billion-dollar miscarriage of justice, which, at the very least, has contributed to spot shortages of a widely used anesthetic, keeps Clark County, Nev., on the hellholes list for another year, ranked seventh.

And McLean County, Ill., makes it to the hellholes rankings for the first time, in the eighth place, thanks to a novel theory of asbestos liability that relieves a plaintiff of the need to show exposure to a defendants product.

"Traditionally, Judicial Hellholes have been considered places where civil judges systematically apply laws and court procedures in an unfair and unbalanced manner, generally against defendants in civil lawsuits," explained ATRA president Tiger Joyce.

"The jurisdictions we name as Judicial Hellholes each year are not the only unfair courts in the nation, but they are among the most unfair, based on our survey of litigants and considerable independent research."

Shifting gears, Joyce said that this years report, more so than any other in the past, also emphasizes a boom in good news from the states with an expanded Points of Light section. Nearly 50 positive tort reform laws were enacted in more than 20 states throughout 2011.

"As anemic economic growth and high unemployment continue to plague much of the country," continued Joyce, "many governors and state legislators were determined to make their states more competitive and attractive to employers.

A variety of tort reform measures figured prominently in these policymakers pro-growth, job-creation agendas. Our Points of Light section details many such tort reform enactments, including comprehensive packages in Wisconsin, Tennessee, Alabama and North Carolina, along with a number of encouragingly fair and balanced court decisions."