Leave it to the courts of Florida. It’s one of the few places where the leveraged buyout king Ronald Perelman, a Wharton MBA whose net worth was recently estimated by Forbes at $4.2 billion, could not get laughed out of court with his claim that he’s a hayseed who has somehow been fleeced by a bunch of big city investment bankers at Morgan Stanley. A judge and jury last week awarded Mr. Perelman a staggering $1.45 billion in punitive and compensatory damages related to his sale of Coleman sporting goods to Sunbeam. Morgan Stanley had advised Sunbeam in the deal.

In a statement saying that it would appeal the decision, Morgan Stanley complained of the Florida court’s “refusal to apply New York law, with its higher requirement for due diligence, despite all parties and events being in New York.” It’s an excellent point. Though Sunbeam was in Florida, Morgan Stanley is in New York. Mr. Perelman is in New York. The deal was done in New York. Morgan Stanley and Mr. Perelman’s peers in the deal making community are in New York, and if he wanted a trial by his peers, it should have taken place here, or at the least in Delaware, which is set up to deal with these sorts of disputes.

As it is, the outsized punitive damages in this case only underscore the need for tort reform. If Morgan Stanley defrauded Mr. Perelman, law enforcement authorities should take the appropriate actions against those responsible. But it is hard to see how justice is served by taking money from Morgan Stanley shareholders – many of them pension funds or small investors – and putting it in the pockets of Mr. Perelman as “punishment.”

More broadly is the question of the Florida courts. Between their shenanigans in the extended recount after the 2000 election, the Theresa Schiavo case, and now this, the Florida courts are sorely lacking in credibility. The court that heard Mr. Perelman’s case against Morgan Stanley is a Florida state bench. President Bush and Congress made a step in the right direction earlier this year when they enacted a law that moves certain class-action cases into federal court, away from the oddball jurisdictions that are famously friendly to forum-shopping plaintiffs. It’s starting to look like such a reform effort might be needed for larger cases between individual plaintiffs. If Governor Bush wants to follow his brother to the White House one day, he is going to have to find a way to rein in these renegade jurists.