For any company involved in litigation, California is a "big" state: It is our most populated state, our third largest state and home to two of the nation's 10 most populous metropolitan areas. If California were a country, its economy would rank eighth among all nations, between Italy and Brazil.

But to companies that have sold products in California, California also is big in a not-so-positive way. In 2012, the American Tort Reform Association awarded California the dubious honor of being the nation's number one "judicial hellhole" for, among many litigation abuses, its runaway asbestos litigation. For these reasons, a rather dry choice-of-law/statutory interpretation case pending before the Supreme Court of California could have serious financial ramifications for manufacturers and their insurers.

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