These days it seems everyone knows someone who is considering pulling up stakes in California and relocating their business and/or personal life to another state. The crush of taxes, regulations and litigation is creating an exodus of job producers and taxpayers.

According to the Wall Street Journal, California leads the country in job losses. And, for the past four years in a row, America’s top CEO’s ranked California “the worst place in which to do business.” One contributing factor is California’s legal climate, which remarkably, dropped again this year in the Institute for Legal Reform's annual Lawsuit Climate report and is now ranked 46 out of the 50 states.

On average, more than four class action lawsuits are filed every business day in California. And some weeks are worse than others -- just during the first week of April, 53 new class actions were filed in state and federal courts.

In California, class action laws are skewed in favor of plaintiff’s attorneys, creating this “gold rush” of class action lawsuits. It is one of the areas of law that is often abused and is harming small businesses and further eroding our economy.

On a positive note, there is currently a bill in the California Assembly that would go a long way toward ending abuse of class action lawsuits. AB 2588 would implement a uniform and fair set of standards modeled on federal rules. The bill is set to be heard in the Assembly Judiciary Committee on May 4^th. Lawmakers on this committee need to hear from constituents that California needs more jobs, not more lawsuits, and urge them to allow the bill to get to the full Assembly for a vote.

Voters need to get serious about electing candidates that favor job creation and economic prosperity – not more of the same job killing policies that have turned the once Golden State of innovation and risk taking in to the Rust State of high taxation, regulation and litigation.