"Tort Reform" Goes National

by Gary Zuckett
Feb 28, 2003

Not satisfied with their pace of knocking off civil justice state-by-state, Big Insurance is mounting a frontal assault on our rights in the courts through H.R.5 now in Congress. The best way to describe H.R.5 is "tort reform" on steroids. It includes the whole "wish list" of the insurance industry to maximize profits and hamstring juries and the whole legal system. Contact your representatives in Washington and tell them to vote no on H.R.5!

Meanwhile, the state legislature has slowed down its pace on the additional "tort reform" bills I've mentioned in the past several weeks. HB 3033 - Medical Monitoring, HB 2809 - Third Party Bad Faith, and HB 2872 - Eliminating Joint Liability are all still in the House Judiciary Committee. March 1st is the "last day to consider (a) bill on third reading in house of origin." Which means any bill originated in but not passed out of the House or Senate is technically dead. I say "technically" because strange things happen the last week of the session. Committees can mysteriously originate bills or amend "dead" bills into live ones when no one is watching. Watch for daily updates next week on such phoenix legislation.

The joint Conference Committee on the big Med Mal "tort reform" Bill will be finishing its work early next week and will come out with a final version of that legislation (HB2021) that does nothing to improve medical malpractice or lower doctors insurance rates but does give docs ten million dollars in tax breaks and up to thirty million to set up their own insurance company. Meanwhile all the draconian limits on juries from the Senate version remain.