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Last-ditch attempt at tort reform in Texas falls short as second bill fails
The last-ditch attempt that the Texas trucking industry had at tort reform in the now-ended legislative session died in a House committee earlier this week. After seeing one other bill die in committee last week, the Texas Trucking Association had hopes that one other piece of legislation – SB30 in the Senate and its companion bill in the House, HB 4806 – might make it through the last few days of the biennial legislative session that ended Monday. But the push came up short. While SB30 was passed by the full Senate, HB 4806 ended the session still on the agenda in the House Judiciary & Civil Jurisprudence failure meant that the Texas Trucking Association (TTA) and other Texas groups went zero for two in tort reform efforts this session. The original version of SB 30 would have made significant changes in the financial penalties that could be levied against a defendant in a lawsuit involving injury. But in a report on the bill from the San Antonio Express News, the newspaper said the death of SB30/HB4806 'came after it already had been pared down to an unrecognizable version that only required disclosure of referrals between lawyers and health care providers. It also would have expanded the options for what evidence could be admitted to estimate damages.' John Esparaza, the CEO of the TTA, issued his second statement in just a few days expressing his disappointment at the outcome of the legislative push.'While the outcome is a setback for all of us who are committed to protecting Texas businesses from abusive litigation practices, TXTA and our partners at the Lone Star Economic Alliance plan to continue to fight for a fair and balanced legal system in Texas,' he said. 'The fact is that fraud in our state continues to grow, enriching a handful of unethical plaintiff attorneys and complicit medical providers who exploit their own clients. As long as the legislature permits it, the miracle of the Texas economy will keep fading. The greatest irony? Highway safety declines as drivers and companies who built careers on making our highways safer leave the industry and are replaced by those unqualified to operate a big rig.' Besides the Texas Trucking Association, another organization that had been deeply involved in the efforts at tort reform in the just-completed session was Texans for Lawsuit Reform, which is part of the Lone Star Economic Alliance mentioned by Esparaza. It released a statement following the end of the session, lamenting the demise of both SB30 and SB39 a week earlier. SB30 dealt mostly with damages, while SB39 was more focused on various rules of the road in litigation. The reforms in the bill, the organization said, 'would have been an essential step toward curbing the meritless lawsuits plaguing Texas businesses of all sizes, across all sectors, by preventing unjustified damage awards, and restoring fairness and transparency to the courtroom.' Noting the similar path of both bill pairings – passed by the Senate, stuck in a House committee – the organization said 'disagreement on final language in the conference committee kept the bill from making it over the finish line.' 'We urge the Texas Legislature to prioritize this issue in the 90th Texas Legislative Session, and to put an end to the blatant fraud on the legal system which jeopardizes Texas's longstanding reputation as the best place in the nation to do business and create jobs,' TLR said in its prepared statement. More articles by John Kingston Georgia tort reform aims to change practices in judicial 'hell hole'A Lego approach helps prepare Manhattan Associates' TMS for tariff chaos BMO's Q2 earnings show no improvement in credit conditions for trucking The post Last-ditch attempt at tort reform in Texas falls short as second bill fails appeared first on FreightWaves.
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4 days ago
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Texas bill, a trucking priority for tort reform, dies in House committee
Legislation that passed the Texas Senate last month and that the trucking industry believed would bring about 'much-needed reforms' in trucking-related lawsuits has died in the House. But another piece of legislation backed by the industry, SB30, and its companion bill, HB 4806, are still considered alive as the Texas state legislative session races toward its Monday conclusion. The companion House bill to SB39, approved in April, was HB 4688. It was referred to the Committee for Judiciary & Civil Jurisprudence. While the House of Representatives' docket for the legislation shows several steps at the committee, including public hearings, there is no vote on the list of no action taken on the bill in recent days, barring a miraculous turn of events, the bill is considered dead in the Texas Legislature, which meets every two years. When the bill passed in the Senate, it was hailed by the Texas Trucking Association. In a prepared statement released at the time, TTA President John Esparaza said the legislation 'marks a significant step forward in protecting the integrity of our legal system and Texas trucking industry.' 'This bill introduces much-needed reforms to how commercial motor vehicle collision cases are handled in Texas courts,' he said at the time. 'These reforms will establish fair, consistent, and statewide standards, helping to ensure that justice is applied equally across the state.' But in a statement released to FreightWaves Thursday, Esparaza conceded defeat for this session.'SB 39 was an important piece of our tort reform package …,' he said in the statement. 'As a priority…we are disappointed that SB 39 died in the House Judiciary & Civil Jurisprudence Committee and will not become law this session.' In a commentary about what SB39 and its companion House bill would have accomplished, attorneys for the law firm of Lewis Brisbois touched on several key points. One change would have minimized questions about the background of the driver, according to the law firm. 'Where defendant trucking companies have already stipulated to their drivers being in the course and scope of employment, plaintiffs' attorneys can no longer inflame juries with arguments about the trucking companies' actions when they have no causal/legal relationship with the harms alleged,' Lewis Brisbois said. 'In other words, if a case goes on to trial, then the jury should solely be focused on the actions of the drivers involved in the incident.' SB39 also was the vehicle that the TTA spoke of last year in trying to complete the unfinished work of HB 19, passed in 2021 but generally seen as not providing the relief in litigation that trucking attorneys had expected. In an interview last year with FreightWaves, Lee Parsley, general counsel for Texans for Lawsuit Reform (TLS), said one of the goals of HB 19 was to give new emphasis to the 'admission rule.' Last year, Parsley said of that rule: 'It basically says that if I, as the employer, agree to accept responsibility for my employees' actions that may have caused the injury, it is supposed to simplify the trial. You don't need to go down the rabbit hole of figuring out things like negligent hiring and negligent training. It's supposed to simplify it so that in the trial, you're just focused on who actually caused the accident and what the damages are at that point.' The Lewis Brisbois commentary said SB39 would have 'recognized the admissions rule by eliminating key exceptions.' Quoting a precedent involving Werner Enterprises (NASDAQ: WERN), the attorneys said the admission rule clarifies that an 'employer's admission that an employee was acting in the course and scope of their employment when the employee allegedly engaged in negligent conduct bars a party allegedly injured by the employee's negligence from pursuing derivative theories of negligence against the employer.' That citation quoted by the attorneys is from the case of Blake vs. Werner, the nuclear verdict initially handed down in 2018 and which now awaits a decision by the Texas Supreme Court following oral arguments in December. The original verdict, less than $90 million, has ballooned to more than $100 million with case involves the death and injuries in a family that crossed the median strip in bad winter weather in West Texas and collided with a Werner truck headed the other direction. The jury verdict that the Werner driver should have been going slower in that weather and would therefore not have been in position to slam into the oncoming vehicle has been a particular source of anger within trucking. But the Blake family involved in the crash won at trial and on appeal before it headed to the state's highest court. The Lewis Brisbois commentary said the critics of SB39 'have voiced concerns that this change will further stifle plaintiffs' abilities to ensure that juries consider all parties and trucking companies' own liability in the harms by alleged company misdeeds.' There is still hope at the TTA for SB30, which seeks to limit various types of payouts in crashes involving trucks through a variety of steps. Like SB39, SB30 passed the Senate. It is considered to have life as HB 4806 before the end of the legislative session. 'We will continue to pursue tort reform in SB30, however, as we head into the weekend and our final day of session on Monday, June 2,' Esparaza said. HB 4806, is still listed as being in committee in the House. In a blog post from the law firm of Varghese Summersett, which among other activities represents plaintiffs suing trucking companies, the firm summed up the key points in the legislation. It would place caps on economic damages, the firm said. It restricts payouts only to amounts paid by the plaintiffs rather than what was billed by the providers of health care services to the plaintiffs. It makes changes in rules of evidence and also changes various liability standards. A jury must be unanimous in settling on noneconomic standards. There is also a shift in defining interest charges. In a summary of SB30 published by TLS, the organization said the combined SB30/HB 4806 'guides jurors with fair and consistent rules for awarding noneconomic damages, ensuring they are truly compensatory.' Among the provisions in the bill, according to TLS, are that the legislation 'gives jurors understandable definitions of pain and suffering and mental anguish and clear instructions that those damages should be based on the plaintiff's injury — not the defendant's conduct that is unrelated to the incident being litigated — and cannot be used to punish a defendant.' More articles by John Kingston Georgia tort reform aims to change practices in judicial 'hell hole' A Lego approach helps prepare Manhattan Associates' TMS for tariff chaos BMO's Q2 earnings show no improvement in credit conditions for trucking The post Texas bill, a trucking priority for tort reform, dies in House committee appeared first on FreightWaves.
