For years, the courts in Madison County, Ill., were regulars on the American Tort Reform Association’s list of “judicial hellholes.” While no longer on the list, the ATRA in a recent report expressed disappointment that the “largely rural county in the southwestern part of Illinois seems to be detouring from its recent road toward progress.”
A judge in Madison County has exposed how one company has allegedly tried to wage a public relations campaign around the “hellhole” label as part of its defense strategy. On April 20, in a class action over alleged water contamination in Madison County, Circuit Judge William Mudge ordered the release of a document that appears to show how defendant Syngenta Crop Protection Inc. and a PR firm tried to influence public perception of Madison County. The campaign was part of Syngenta’s defense of a lawsuit by municipal water systems over the alleged contamination of drinking water by the company’s weed killer Atrazine.
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