GOP "Tort Reform" is Economic Apartheid

Get the Point!

“The first thing we do is, let’s kill all the lawyers.” William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part II, circa 1596.

It has become quite chic in Florida and other parts of the Republican heavy Deep South for conservative legislatures and governors to cast trial lawyers as ambulance chasing revenants sent to bedevil corporate interests, big and small, through lawsuits that they claim serve to raise insurance rates while driving businesses out of state. 

Gov. Ron DeSantis

Nothing could be further from the truth…

But as I lament time and again in this Blog, truth is stranger than fiction these days as most voters lack the discipline to push past the rhetoric of their favorite political figures, like Florida's increasingly popular Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), to determine whether those that they support actually have their best interests in mind. 

In trailer parks across the South, Donald Trump and other Republicans have found massive support among poor folks who do not benefit from the majority of the GOP's economic “reforms” that benefit the rich and corporate honchos…

Well, if you aren't rich, specifically, if you dwell somewhere in the middle to lower economic classes—as the overwhelming majority of Americans do—then the Republican Party's "tort reform" measures are NOT in your best interests at all!

For the doubters, consider that you are driving on the interstate one evening after work and get into a catastrophic car accident with a drunk driver that keeps you from working for months, if not years, but the insurance company is stalling and refusing to pay. Do you think that the insurance company's corporate conscience will kick in, or will it take a trial lawyer to demand that they pay up? 

Or, consider that your daughter has had her violently abusive husband committed per the Baker Act after he chokes and threatens to kill her, but after the mandatory 72-hour observation period, the mental hospital doesn't alert your daughter of his pending release, per Florida law, and said husband catches a bus to the house, breaks in, and stabs her to death before hanging himself to death in front of their three year old son. Do you think that the mental hospital's corporate conscience will kick in, or will it take a trial lawyer to demand that they pay up?

Or, consider that the apartment complex in which you live has black mold that's well known to the leasing manager and property owners who could not care less that your asthma or other pulmonary disorders are being worsened by these deadly defects; do you think that their corporate conscience will kick in, or will it take a trial lawyer to demand that they pay up?

Or, consider that your 11-year old son has epileptic seizures, and when he shows signs of being allergic to medicine A, his physician prescribes medicine B as an alternative. But the physician doesn't know that medicine B causes the same allergic reactions as medicine A because the pharmaceutical company that won FDA approval for the drug willfully concealed that information from the FDA. After your child dies from the allergic reaction, do you think that the pharmaceutical company's corporate conscience will kick in, or will it take a trial lawyer to demand that they pay up?

If you chose "trial lawyer demanding payment" in the above four scenarios, consider yourself SMART. Please know that those hypotheticals were not taken from Ol' Hobbs's imagination, but describe matters that I helped litigate back in the early 2000’s that took thousands of hours to drag corporations and insurance companies to the table to pay up for their OBVIOUS negligence or culpability. 

But sadly, here in Florida and across the South, some of the SAME voters who have had similar and worse cases successfully handled by trial lawyers who fought to ensure that their families could live, eat, or assuage their grief from a deceased loved one’s negligent death, are now among the biggest cheerleaders when lawyers who know better, like Gov. Ronald DeSantis, Esquire, cast their former colleagues as the problem—instead of the solution to legal problems. 

The very crowds that raucously applaud men like Trump and DeSantis are filled with lower economic folks who will be madder than a wet hen when they realize that their access to the Courthouse has been severely limited or closed by the very folks that they admire the most…

Last week, “Attorney" DeSantis signed into law HB 837, a sweeping "tort reform" measure that radically changes how negligence cases will be handled in Florida. 

To break down an entire law school semester's worth of lessons, do know that individual states across America use one of three negligence standards: 1. Pure Comparative Negligence, 2. Modified Comparative Negligence, 3. Contributory Negligence. For brevity's sake, Florida was a Pure Comparative Negligence state until last week, when DeSantis's signature changed Florida law to a Modified Comparative Negligence Standard.

What's the difference?

Under the former standard, an injured plaintiff could recover in proportion to the defendants' percentage of responsibility for the plaintiff's injuries—regardless of the plaintiff's liability. Meaning, if a jury deemed a plaintiff 60 percent at fault for an accident, and a defendant 40 percent at fault for the same accident, the plaintiff could recover 40 percent of the financial damages from the defendant. Thus, if the jury calculated economic damages and pain and suffering at, say, $100k, the defendant would be required to pay $40k of that amount. 

Under the new standard, a plaintiff can recover from a defendant ONLY if a jury finds that the plaintiff's own share of fault is 50 percent or less. Meaning, in the above scenario where a jury found that there was $100k worth of damages but deemed the plaintiff 60 percent at fault and the defendant 40 percent at fault, the plaintiff would recover NOTHING!

Heretofore, the overwhelming majority of personal injury and wrongful death cases in Florida ended in settlement, usually prior to mediation, but sometimes during or after mediation, and definitely prior to a jury trial.

Now, with the more stringent negligence standards, insurance companies that already were used to stalling to see how patient a plaintiff and their lawyer(s) would be, will have even greater incentive to stall or go to trial and hope that a jury will find a plaintiff 51 percent at fault or more. That fact, coupled with the reality that the new DeSantis law changes the Statute of Limitations to file negligence suits from four years to two years, will have a chilling effect on middle class to poor folks who, but for a trial lawyer paying all expenses out of their own pockets and assuming all the risks to fight for their clients, may find themselves economically devastated with no relief in sight. 

Access to the courts across the South grows tighter each year due to the Republican Party…

And yet, millions of Florida Republicans and conservative leaning independents, the ones who just love how MAGA men like DeSantis and Donald Trump fight the culture wars against "The Mexicans," "The Muslims," "The Gays," and "The Blacks," have unwittingly screwed themselves and their families when—not if—they find themselves the victims of catastrophic personal injuries or wrongful deaths. Which serves to remind, once more, why it is important for Democrats, left leaning Independents, and those handful of Republicans still endowed with common sense, to push back against those conservatives whose fealty is to profits for major corporate entities—not the people that they claim to represent while in office.