Mostly insurance-friendly bills advance in Louisiana Legislature's debate over auto coverage rates

Yahoo

29-04-2025

The Interstate 10 bridge spans the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. (Photo: Wes Muller/Louisiana Illuminator)
Insurance companies handily gained an advantage Monday in the Louisiana Legislature's debate over how to bring down the state's exorbitant auto coverage rates. Lawmakers worked well into the evening to approve a long list of bills that target personal injury lawsuits, which they said is the primary cause of high premiums.
House Bill 34, sponsored by Rep. Brian Glorioso, R-Slidell, passed the House of Representatives in a 68-26 vote and now heads to the Senate for consideration. It would allow any party in a lawsuit that stems from an auto accident to introduce evidence related to medical expenses.
Current law prevents juries from seeing what accident victims actually pay for medical treatment and only allows access to what a doctor billed. In many instances, however, medical providers don't actually receive the full amounts that they bill. Sometimes, Glorioso said, lawyers work with doctors who will inflate their medical billings just to get an increased payout for the plaintiff. Also, health insurers often do not pay doctors the full amounts they bill.
Glorioso's bill would limit a plaintiff's recovery of medical expenses to 'reasonable' amounts, which would be left for a judge or jury to decide.
The vote on the bill fell mostly along party lines with two defections from each side. Democrats Pat Moore of Monroe and Steven Jackson of Shreveport voted in favor of the proposal. Republicans Jeremy LaCombe of Livonia, an attorney, and Joe Stagni of Kenner opposed it.
During floor debate, several Democrats pointed to similar tort reform bills from years prior that failed to reduce Louisiana's auto insurance rates, which remain among the highest in the country.
Rep. Sylvia Taylor, D-LaPlace asked Glorioso whether he could say for certain that his bill would lower premiums — a question heard frequently from Democrats as Republicans have presented their insurance bills. Glorioso, who's a lawyer, rejected the premise of the argument.
'If that is the standard by which we're going to pass insurance bills, we may as well go home,' Glorioso said, implying that such guarantees would be impossible to make.
House Bill 435, by Rep. Peter Egan, R-Covington, passed in a 62-23 vote and drew some of the more colorful debate of the evening — even though it's unlikely to have much of an impact on auto insurance rates. It puts a ceiling on the amount a person can be awarded in a lawsuit, capping general damages at $5 million even in the case of wrongful death.
When the bill came up for a hearing last week in the House Committee on Civil Law and Procedure, lawmakers pointed out that it won't directly lower rates because $5 million is already the maximum payout on commercial auto policies in Louisiana. Insurance companies currently don't pay any more than that regardless of how much a jury awards a plaintiff.
Nevertheless, Egan has said his bill would stem what he believes is a culture of litigiousness in Louisiana if people understand they can no longer receive huge jury awards.
Rep. Edmond Jordan, D-Baton Rouge, an attorney, questioned how Republicans can claim to be 'pro-life' if they would support a bill that effectively establishes a $5 million maximum value on a person's life.
'This cap is the opposite of pro-life,' Jordan said. 'If you were truly pro-life, you would not succumb and agree with the premise that we should be putting [value] caps on people's lives.'
Rep. Raymond Crews, R-Bossier City, argued Louisiana residents are overwhelmingly complaining of excessive litigation and asking lawmakers to fix the tort system in an effort to lower rates.
House Bill 439, by Rep. Troy Hebert, R-Lafayette, passed in a 57-30 vote with LaCombe and Stagni joining Democrats in opposition. The bill aims to limit contingency fees, the money a lawyer makes off a percentage of the lawsuit winnings, to 10% on the first $15,000 in damages. Settlements with insurers for most minor accidents fall under this ceiling. For any damages beyond $15,000, Hebert's bill would not limit lawyer payments.
House Bill 431, by Rep. Emily Chenevert, R-Baton Rouge, passed in a 66-26 vote along strict party lines. The bill would limit the ability for people to recover damages for injuries sustained in accidents for which they are mostly at fault.
Her bill would change Louisiana's comparative fault statute, which assigns a percentage of blame to each party in an accident and allows for the recovery of damages in proportion with those percentages.
Under current law, a person partly at fault in an accident would be liable for their share of the damages and can recover the remaining amount found to be the fault of the other party. Chenevert's bill would change that to prohibit recovery of any amount by a party who's 51% or more at fault.
House Bill 450, by Rep. Michael Melerine, R-Shreveport, would end the Housley presumption, a standard of evidence explained in a 1991 Louisiana Supreme Court ruling that applies to auto accidents, medical malpractice and other injury lawsuits. In a nutshell, the Housley presumption says courts should assume a plaintiff's injuries resulted from the accident in question if they were in good health beforehand.
Lawmakers have tried repeatedly to revoke the presumption, only to see their attempts fail or vetoed. This year is expected to be different as Gov. Jeff Landry recently signaled support for the measure from Melerine, whose law firm handles insurance defense and other litigation.
House Bill 436, by Rep. Gabe Firment, R-Pollock, passed in a 69-17 vote. It would prohibit 'unauthorized aliens' — defined in the measure as individuals illegally in the United States under federal immigration law — from receiving general damages stemming from auto accidents. General damages include compensation for pain and suffering, but the proposal would still allow recovery for 'special damages,' such as medical expenses and property damage.
Firment, an insurance adjuster, said the purpose of his bill is to help address the state's auto insurance crisis while discouraging illegal immigration.
House Bill 443, by Rep. Chance Henry, R-Crowley, passed in a 70-22 vote. It would require plaintiffs to notify defendants of an intent to file a lawsuit within 10 days of retaining a lawyer.
Currently, plaintiffs' lawyers can gather evidence and prepare for a lawsuit for almost two full years before a defendant is even aware a suit is coming. Henry, an insurance agency owner, said his bill would give a defendant the same amount of time to prepare for a claim as a plaintiff.
House Bill 291, sponsored by Rep. Jay Gallé, R-Mandeville, won the most bipartisan support of the insurance bills, passing the chamber in a 90-5 vote. It would extend the filing deadline, called a 'prescriptive period,' for wrongful death lawsuits from one year to two, aligning Louisiana with the deadline in most other states.
Proponents of the bill have argued that a shorter prescriptive period attracts more tenuous lawsuits by essentially forcing people to quickly file claims so as to not lose their litigation rights. The proposal also complements a similar measure lawmakers approved last year to extend the deadline for filing personal injury claims.
A measure that did not target litigation, House Bill 496, also gathered bipartisan support in a 86-3 vote. It would give policyholders a pass protecting them from any rate increases tied to a lapse in auto coverage. The bill would prohibit insurers from penalizing policyholders for a single instance of nonpayment during a five-year period.
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