One cannot help but marvel over how a change of seasons can change one’s perspective on photography. Justice Larry Starcher’s for instance.

In January, Starcher was so jacked about vacation pictures of the chief justice, he burned the phone lines on his state-issued cell phone in chats with High Court candidate Menis Ketchum and the incoming honcho of the state’s personal injury bar.

Now, according to the Gazette’s Phil Kabler, Starcher is suddenly camera shy, ducking the annual group photo of the tribunal. A memo Starcher authored, perhaps on the same computer in which he exchanged e-mails with another Supreme Court candidate, explains his “rationale” for the cop out: a rationale that since he was snubbed for the Chief Justice title last year, he was snubbing back.

Even Kabler raised eyebrows over Starcher’s “holding a grudge” and the weirdly-composed third-person point-of-view of the memo. In the end, this may have been Larry’s immature attempt to participate in Justice Robin Davis’ pet project: Year of the Child.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Jeff Kessler recently told a Wheeling newspaper that he’s eager to require disclosure of those funding campaign ads, such as the spots an independent group sought to air in the Supreme Court primary this spring.

Maybe the chairman has an opinion about West Virginia Consumers for Justice, the personal injury lawyer front group that spent nearly $2 million on behalf of former Justice Warren McGraw without disclosing its contributors. Surely, Kessler’s less than zealous pursuit of the Consumers for Justice’s contributor names has nothing to do with the fact that a trial lawyer associated with the group - Tim Bailey - recently contributed to Kessler’s campaign.

Bailey just so happens to be a law partner of House Judiciary Chairwoman Carrie Webster, who has also pushed for new campaign finance reforms. Webster’s firm stands to possibly make as much as $1 million in legal fees as a result of one of Attorney General Darrell McGraw’s no-bid legal contracts. Could Webster’s actions be motivate by the fact that her law partner wants to prohibit election spending criticical of the Attorney General’s abusive practices?

Campaign finance laws shouldn’t be used to selectively quiet political viewpoints. Perhaps Chairwoman Webster can ask Tim Bailey to explain to the Judiciary Committee just who contributed to the Consumers for Justice.

West Virginia continues to be closed for business. While many of our political leaders like to paint a rosy picture of our state’s economic outlook, real economic indicators don’t lie. Recently released figures from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis indicate that West Virginia’s economic growth slowed to 0.1% over the past year – a rate that is considerably lower than the growth rate of all of our neighboring states as well as the national rate. West Virginia also ranked second worst in the nation in per capita real gross domestic product, again only managing slightly better than Mississippi.

Meanwhile, State Senator Brooks McCabe pointed out the real possibility that Charleston’s overall population could drop below the 50,000 person mark when the 2010 census is completed. “If we’re saying we’re open for business, and don’t have even one city over 50,000, I would argue we’re being naïve,” McCabe frankly noted.

Until our legal system is competitive with those of other states, especially our neighbors, West Virginia will continue to rank as one of the worst states in the nation for business.

With the ambulance lights flashing at Sago, Charleston personal injury lawyer Tim Bailey took a page from New Martinsville colleague H. John Rogers’ playbook. Remember Rogers’ Rule: “if somebody can make $50 million by running to Yeagar Airport while the ashes are smoldering, why not?”

Bailey, according to the Wall Street Journal, was camped out at Sago in a playpen of personal injury lawyers, trolling for clients, shamelessly seeking to profit from the grief of the mining families and tragedy of their local community.

His imitation of the H. John tactic, it seems, has paid off. Bailey has reached a confidential settlement with a manufacturer of mine materials used to seal Sago.

Meanwhile, other Sago plaintiffs are miffed that the lawsuit they hoped would reap at least $10.5 million, before punitive damages, was settled for less than a fifth of that. With West Virginia courts delivering punitive damage verdicts in the quarter-billion dollar range these days, no wonder.

West Virginia got another stark reminder of why our state’s legal climate is routinely ranked the worst in the nation. Last week, the State Supreme Court refused to hear appeals of two of the largest verdicts in the entire nation last year, totaling more than $664 million in damages. As a result of the Supreme Court’s actions, natural gas company Chesapeake Energy has halted construction on its proposed Charleston-based headquarters, choosing instead to invest its $35 million elsewhere.

Once again, our state finds itself outside the legal mainstream. West Virginia is one of only two states in the nation that doesn’t provide civil litigants with an automatic right of appeal of some sort. Our state’s lack of an intermediate appellate court also places West Virginia in the minority. In most instances, circuit judges essentially serve as the court of last resort for West Virginia litigants. That’s a scary proposition considering the recent election of Warren McGraw to the Wyoming County Circuit Court.

How many jobs must our state lose before our political leaders decide to actually do something about our broken court system? All West Virginians deserve the right to be heard. Until we provide civil litigants with some sort of automatic right of appeal, job providers will continue to take their jobs to states that emphasize fairness, and not legal fees for personal injury lawyers.