TO GRASP the importance of lawsuit reform, sometimes it’s useful to start with an anecdote and move to a conclusion.
The anecdote: In Virginia last week, a jury awarded $2 million to a couple whose 4-year-old son was run over by a riding lawn mower. This judgment was made against the manufacturer, not the owner or operator of the mower, because the jury bought a trial lawyer’s argument that the manufacturer should have somehow known the mower could kill a child.
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Anecdotal evidence is abundant that Oklahoma’s tort system has been detrimental to the recruitment and retention of doctors, particularly those who deliver babies, and has driven up the cost of liability insurance.
Texas had the same problem. Had. Better than anecdotal evidence is available on the transformation of Texas from a judicial hellhole to a model state. In 2003, voters narrowly approved a tort reform package in the face of overwhelming trial bar opposition. The selling point for the reforms was the growing shortage of physicians, particularly in certain specialties and in certain counties.
Writing recently in The Wall Street Journal, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich noted that since the passage of tort reform, Texas has gained nearly 4,000 doctors. The census of medical professionals in the Lone Star State is growing at the highest rate ever. Counties with a shortage of doctors “have all experienced an influx of physicians,” wrote Gingrich, who is founder of the Center for Health Transformation. After tort reform passed, rates for the state’s largest liability carrier were reduced by 12 percent and then another 5 percent. In March, another major malpractice carrier in Texas dropped premiums by an average of 18 percent.
Conclusion: Whether it’s a lawsuit blaming a manufacturer for something it can’t control or a tort system that aids millionaire lawyers at the expense of doctors, lawsuit reform is essential. Yet the Democrats controlling the state Senate in Oklahoma keep cutting tort reform off at the pass.
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