Los Angeles is the worst jurisdiction in the entire United States for legal fairness. What’s more, the entire state of California is unfair to litigants.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform found that California, West Virginia, Louisiana, Illinois and Texas are the worst states in the country for legal fairness. This is a drop from our position as the fifth worst state in 2005 and the sixth worst in 2004.

But the really striking news is that ahead of Metropolitian New York and Jefferson County (the class action capital of the country), Los Angeles was rated as the absolutely most unfair place to get sued in the country. One in five attorneys surveyed nationwide felt the Los Angeles legal system is unfair, primarily due to “biased judgment.”

California ranked particularly poorly in non-economic damages (pain and suffering, punitive, that sort of thing) and jury predictibility.

Read on to see how the states and cities were measured.

Corporate litigators (generally defense counsel) rated the states on technical but important measures:

• having and enforcing meaningul venue requirements
• overall treatment of tort and contract litigation
• treatment of class action suits and mass consolidation suits
• punitive damages
• timeliness of summary judgment or dismissal
• discovery
• scientific and technical evidence
• non-economic damages
• judges’ impartiality and competence
• juries’ predicability and fairness

If you don’t want to move, put your assets in a state that treats litigants more fairly. One of my favorites, Wyoming, rated 16 out of 50.