Ending lawsuit abuse good for working families

By By Steve Browning / special to The Star
Nov. 30, 2003
Mississippi's battle to end lawsuit abuse in our courtrooms, also known as tort reform, is about creating a business and legal climate in our state where working families will have an abundance of job opportunities, access to health care and modestly priced insurance rates.
It's not about taking away compensation from people who are entitled to justice. It's about the future of our great state.
Greedy personal injury attorneys continue to play games with our state's legal system. Even though changes were made to Mississippi's legal rules to halt some lawsuit abuses, enough loopholes remain for clever personal injury attorneys to do untold damage.
Venue shopping
Greedy personal injury attorneys can still shift lawsuits between regions of the state for the sole reason that some Mississippi courtrooms have a long history of awarding outrageous verdicts for frivolous lawsuits. It's unfortunate that our state's legal rules still allow "venue shopping" in civil cases.
Venue shopping has nothing to do with fairness or justice for those who have been wronged but rather driving-up the odds for awards of $10 million or greater which only line the pockets of personal injury attorneys.
Court cases that belong in Alcorn County should stay in Alcorn County courtrooms, not be moved to Jefferson County courtrooms, where a personal injury attorney is almost certainly guaranteed a huge payday.
Greedy personal injury attorneys can still easily combine unrelated lawsuits and unrelated plaintiffs together to create a "mass tort" of thousands of plaintiffs which more than likely can result in outrageous verdicts.
It's unfortunate that Mississippi's legal rules still allow the practice of combining so many unrelated people into one lawsuit. An even more startling fact is that non-Mississippians can be included in these lawsuits, bottling-up our court systems for several years. Mississippi's courthouses are intended for Mississippians, not out-of-state residents. This legal practice does not further the cause of justice for our citizens, but rather further lines the pockets of personal injury lawyers.
Access to health care
Have you wondered why access to health care is hard to come by in Mississippi's rural areas? The combination of thousands of unrelated plaintiffs into one mass lawsuit is a key reason why. Only sensible joinder reform will eliminate this specific lawsuit abuse and bring back a sense of sanity to our courtrooms.
The legal reforms enacted by the Legislature last fall were a remarkable first step toward fixing the breakdowns in our court system but lawsuit abuse still remains. More needs to be done.
Mississippians need the 2004 Legislature to finish the job it started last fall. Our courtrooms should be halls of justice where all parties are responsibly treated, not places where personal injury lawyers can get millions of dollars from innocent business people.
We want the nation to know that doing business in our state is smart. We want out-of-state manufacturers and businesses to set-up shop inside our state borders while employing hundreds of our people. We also want businesses to know should they be sued our state's civil justice system will treat them fairly.
Only a complete end to lawsuit abuse through legal reform legislation will accomplish this goal.
Steve Browning is executive director of Mississippians for Economic Progress.