The American Tort Reform Foundation has just published a new white paper detailing the coordinated efforts of personal injury lawyers to increase litigation and repeal or chip away at existing tort reform statutes enacted previously by state governments.

Why should anyone care?  Because the front-page prosecutions of Bill Lerach and Dickie Scruggs, coupled with various tort reform court victories in recent years, make it easy enough for some in the media and elsewhere to believe that the plaintiffs’ bar is in retreat. 

But as our white paper makes clear, personal injury lawyers and their allies are still aggressively, if subtly, on the march, particularly at the state level.  Their new drive to expand liability and litigation markets has been quiet, but it’s robust and as opportunistic as ever.

The paper, Defrocking Tort Deform: Stopping Personal Injury Lawyers from Repealing Existing Tort Reforms and Expanding Rights to Sue in State Legislatures (PDF/828 KB), cites nearly 60 of the more than 80 separate bills proposed for serious consideration last year in more than two dozen state legislatures across the country.  This year, at least 50 such bills have already been introduced in 19 statehouses. 

Surprisingly, the national trial lawyers’ association criticized our paper a few weeks back, before it was published and before they’d read it, they’ve since admitted to Congressional Quarterly.  Of course, they guessed wrong about its contents.  Our paper is not an advocacy piece per se; it merely shines light on matters of public record wherein the enterprising personal injury bar is trying to grow its business. 

To put the paper in broader context, understand that for more than 30 years, personal injury lawyers worked through the courts to fight reasonable limits on lawsuit abuse.  This process became known as “judicial nullification of tort reform.”

But now, the plaintiffs’ bar has opened a second front, seeking to roll back tort reforms and create new litigation rights through the legislative process.  Often enough, these efforts aren’t overtly led by recognized trial lawyer associations, but by so-called ‘consumer groups’ closely allied with the trial lawyers.    

From explicitly authorizing new types of lawsuits and implied causes of action to the deputizing of private lawyers by activist state attorneys general, and from expanding consumer laws and limits on damages awards to the extension or elimination of statutes of limitation and repose, the tort bar’s well-orchestrated, well-financed campaign at the state level dovetails with its comparable pursuit of “trial lawyer earmarks” in Congress.

Tort lawyers comprise one of the nation’s richest special interests and collectively contribute more money to political campaigns than just about any other industry group.  This makes their influence with legislators and other elected officials a serious concern.  We hope our white paper will help tort reform advocates in state capitals understand what they’re up against and how they can better defend against it.

(The white paper specifically references bills in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas and Washington.)