Texas House passes emergency bill making it more risky to sue corporations for wrongdoing

http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2011/05/house-passes-loser-pays-in-ram.html

House passes loser pays in ramrod style vote - no amendments, no debate
By Karen Brooks

The Texas House just forced through - with barely a quorum - an omnibus bill making it more risky to sue big corporations for wrongdoing.

By a vote of 86 to 11 - with three present not voting (exactly the 100 reps needed to pass motions and bills) the House decided to push HB 274 right on through to a vote with no debate or amendments. This is a highly unusual move, but perfectly legal under the House rules - and a bit surprising that the GOP supermajority of 101 didn't try this earlier. Right after that vote, the House passed the bill on a vote of 89-12 - after days of obstruction by Democrats who object to its protections for corporations and high (and therefore discouraging) risks taken by people who wish to sue them.

Rep. Craig Eiland, D-Galveston, objected strongly to the move, saying people on both sides of the aisle had amendments that would make it better, and that stifling debate when they knew they had the votes was just wrongheaded. "You have 80 coauthors. You have 101 members of this House. You can pass this bill at any time you want to," he said. "But to eliminate debate, eliminate hearing other voices and to eliminate opportunities to make it better, that is a grave mistake. I have to go out and work under these rules, and to know that there is no debate in the House of Representatives where we mix it up - as opposed to the club in the Senate, where they don't? It's very disappointing. You can pass this bill and any other bill you want at any time without resorting to this depth of elimination of public debate and suppression of the minority voice."

Author Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, said he's been trying to debate the bill and pass the bill "for days" (well, since Thursday) and "for hours today" but that Democrats keep using the House rules to delay it. When the House gets to final passage of the bill on Monday, he said, they can debate it all day and they can amend it if they want (though amendments on final passage require 2/3 vote), he said. "This is an emergency item, everyone on this floor has measures that are to be considered that are very important following this bill that we have to get to before this sesison expires, and my motion stands," he said.

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http://www.texaswatch.org/2011/05/loser-pays-means-families-pay/

...Despite the lobbyists’ rhetorical misdirections, this issue has nothing to do with penalizing people who file meritless lawsuits. We already have stiff penalties on the books for that, including the payment of attorneys’ fees. Their real goal is to erase the notion of corporate responsibility. They want to erect so many obstacles to justice that we just throw up our hands and let corporate criminals like BP off the hook.

HB 274 would allow insurance companies even more latitude to deny and underpay valid claims. For instance, a family injured in an auto accident would face an impossible choice if the at-fault driver’s insurance company denied a valid claim. The family would face the threat of paying the bloated legal costs of the insurance company’s legions of lawyers or accepting whatever low-ball offer the insurer makes.

Florida’s experience with a scheme similar to the one being debated by our legislature was so bad that lawmakers there repealed it just five years later. As the Duke Law Journal notes, proponents are “diplomatically silent about Florida’s unsuccessful experience.” A former president of the nation’s oldest association of civil defense lawyers put it bluntly: “They tried it in Florida, and it was a disaster.”

Known as the “British Rule,” this concept was roundly rejected by our nation’s founders more than two centuries ago because it guts individual liberty. In recent years, however, Britain and other countries have begun to rethink the wisdom of this system. In fact, the British Ministry of Justice recently commissioned a report that recommends that Britain scrap its current system in favor of the “American Rule” in which both parties are responsible for their own legal costs. The Economist magazine proclaimed that “every citizen in the land would, at last, have a fair opportunity to have a case heard in the nation’s courts.”

In other words, if you sue someone and lose, you must pay the other side's legal fees. And large corporations can afford to run their bills up so high that even the threat of being stuck with those bills will deter folks with valid cases from pursuing them.

Note that there doesn't seem to be a parallel provision that if you sue and win, the loser must pay your fees.

In addition to paying for your own lawyer, if you lose you will have to pay the massive legal fees of the corporation you are suing.

This is essentially designed to quash a lot of lawsuits against corporate interests. How many people are going to sue a company when they face the risk of having to pay millions in legal fees?

Since there will be fewer suits brought, and zero liability even when a valid suit is thrown out for whatever reason, it will make business sense to operate in a more predatory way.

Just another move to make corporations untouchable.

can afford the fines and advertise my 5000 strong army of $500 attorneys, and 20000 strong legal aides you'll be responsible for paying if you lose. Now would you like to think about that $2000 settlement I offered you?

Laws were instituted thousands of years ago to insure that anybody with a grievance would pursue it through the courts and not start up a personal blood feud.

By making it impossible to do that, they're just asking for the return of individual violence as a response to injury.

Of course, being Texas, they might like the idea of frontier justice -- but I don't think they'll enjoy it all that much in practice.