Job growth is an uphill battle in many parts of our country, but West Virginia continues to lag behind other states due in large part to the unneeded roadblocks of an ailing legal system. The U.S. Census Bureau recently released its latest population estimates, and the Mountain State again showed little signs of gain.

As a whole, our state’s population growth is stagnant at best — increasing by a tiny 0.3 percent since 2000. And most of our state’s largest cities continue to lose population year after year. We are now faced with the real possibility of being one of only two states in the nation without a city larger than 50,000 people.

While tough economic times certainly don’t help matters, West Virginia’s problems can’t be blamed exclusively on the recent financial meltdown. For several years now, we’ve had one of the lowest per-capita incomes in the nation, and our state now is routinely ranked as one of the worst states in the nation for jobs by Forbes Magazine.

Ironically, this period of national economic turmoil actually has shined a spotlight on some of the tactics that encourage job growth the best. The passage of meaningful legal reforms is one simple, low-cost method of attracting new jobs to a state. As many states struggle to pay even their monthly bills, some states continue to attract jobs, in part, because of their fair legal system.

The Wall Street Journal recently highlighted the efforts of Texas politicians to preserve important legal reforms that have helped spur tremendous economic growth for the state. Just last year, Texas created more new jobs than the remaining 49 states combined.

Some of the measures encouraging job growth in Texas include:

* asbestos/silica reforms that weed out fraudulent claims by requiring proof of injury and ensure that the most seriously injured individuals get their day in court through expedited trial proceedings;

* liability rules to protect most individuals from paying for damages they didn’t cause;

* strong venue reform aimed at prohibiting a flood of lawsuits from out-of-state plaintiffs;

* jury service reforms that help encourage greater citizen participation in the legal process.

While West Virginia has passed some important reforms in recent years, our state laws are oftentimes still outside of the legal mainstream. Sadly, the Mountain State currently is home to several notorious cases of alleged asbestos fraud, and it lacks sufficient protections against the filing of fraudulent asbestos claims.

Our state also has a lower threshold than many other states for allowing individuals to be held liable for damages they may not have caused. We also are one of only two states in the nation that doesn’t guarantee its citizens some mandatory right of appeal. And out-of-state personal injury lawyers and their clients often take advantage of our courts at the expense of West Virginia taxpayers — only two of the 900 plaintiffs in one recently filed Kanawha County case were actually West Virginia residents.

The recently appointed Independent Commission on Judicial Reform is a good first step toward fixing our legal system. A review of West Virginia’s court system — including the lack of an intermediate court of appeals and mandatory right of appeal — is long overdue. However, other reforms must also be considered. As illustrated in West Virginia University Economics Professor Russell S. Sobel’s latest book, “The Rule of Law,” our state must change the way it deals with punitive damages, joint-and-several liability, and medical monitoring if it expects to spur economic growth.

With so many other states struggling, now is the time to send a clear message to job providers that our state is more interested in fairness than frivolous lawsuits. Let’s enact reasonable laws that treat everyone fairly and guarantee that every truly injured person gets his or her day in court. If we pass reasonable laws, the jobs will follow.

Richie Heath is executive director of West Virginia Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, Charleston.