The (Black) Magic of Tort Reform *Cotton Mouth Exclusive*

By Lance Stevens, former President of the Miss. Trial Lawyers Assoc.

My friend and political adversary, Lex Taylor, wields a magical pen when he writes on his favorite subject–tort reform. “Magic” because he clearly writes with disappearing ink. You know, the kind that packs the same sincerity as those trick candles you can never blow out on a birthday cake.

Taylor, a manufacturing heir who hates the mere suggestion of justice for anyone out of his social class, pushes the envelope in the Clarion-Ledger editorial where he suggests that Mississippi’s new tort deformed legal environment has improved our economy and health care system. Heck, even his anecdotes fall on their face.

If I were a trial lawyer–and I am–I would dismantle his logic piece by piece with today’s realities and hard statistics, rather than the sweet sounds of the letters to the editor which drove the tort reform debate.

First, let’s start with the hardest sell: lawsuits and doctors. Physicians are such role models, often life savers, that their romanticized stature in the community is beyond reproach. I think the world of them, as most of my colleagues do, though they do not share my enthusiasm when us.

But they are secretly up in arms about being duped as the tort reform hit men. When financial markets hit record lows in early 2001-2002, their insurance premiums more than doubled. And now that markets have rebounded, their premiums have been reduced a mere 15%. This is so even though Lex claims medical malpractice claims are down 90% (by the way, he doesn’t tell us how many of those 90% were legitimate negligence claims where children, the elderly and homemakers suffered horribly, but the new laws make a financial recovery impossible). Premiums up 150%, claims down 90%, financial market way up, premiums only down 15%. Sort of makes you scratch your head, doesn’t it?

But doctors aren’t speaking up publicly because nobody likes to admit to being bamboozled. I’ve been there. I’ve been snookered before. It’s embarrassing. But to get used so publicly and on such a grand scale is humiliating–particularly when admitting it would mean your blood enemies (trial lawyers) were right all along: rates went up, but not because of mongo jury verdicts.

Second, you have to roll out of your chair when Taylor lists the new business recruits in the state since 2002. Can you say Bryan Foods? The furniture industry? Any number of other plant closings statewide? What my friend Taylor and his cronies are spectacularly successful at is overlooking the big picture–the fact that the state has lost more manufacturing jobs this decade than in any other time in history– and spoonfeeding their justice hating lemmings with inapplicable “success” stories. And that brings us to the whopper of all bogus stories.

When Toyota picked San Antonio over north Mississippi for it Tundra plant around 2002, a Toyota official named Dennis Cuneo broke tradition and gushed to local business journals about how Mississippi was a close second and was a superior site for industry. Then, years later, at the request of the Governor, that same Toyota official suggested in a letter that our tort system cost us the Toyota plant.

A well researched memo was then circulated around the Capitol which made Cuneo/Barbour’s claim a laughing stock. But now you even hear disingenuous candidates like Charlie Ross making the same claim. Here are the facts. I personally asked Governor Musgrove about his negotiations with Toyota and he assured me, while shaking his head and rolling his eyes, that Toyota never even mentioned our tort laws or Court system. The Capitol memo, entitled “Tall Tales from Tejas,” included numerous quotes from Cuneo outlining the reasons Toyota picked San Antonio. They are too lengthy to mention here, but let’s just say the dual rail system, the largest truck market in the country and surreal tax incentives and subsidies were high on his list, and civil justice never passed his lips.

But what makes the claim truly comical is that Texas did not enact tort reform until after the Toyota plant deal. They were ranked 46th our of 50 states in the Chamber of Commerce’s darling Harris Poll when it comes to judicial fairness to corporations. . To this day, after their tort reform disaster, Texas is ranked 47th . Civil justice had nothing to do with Toyota’s decision to pick Texas.

So what about the new Toyota plant that Northeast Mississippi local government officials heroically captured after Governor Barbour refused to assist them legislatively? Well, that same Chamber of Commerce poll to this day–five years after the monumental tort reform of 2002 and three years after the passage of wave two in 2004–ranks Mississippi 49th in the country in judicial fairness. Forty ninth! Only West Virginia gets lower marks than us.

So let’s get this picture straight. Civil justice has nothing to do with recruiting big business (if a defective car kills someone in Salt Lake City, Utah laws will apply, not Mississippi). And the Harris Poll is a bunch of obnoxious corporate lawyers who think we Mississippians are all a bunch of toothless, barefoot, uneducated, racists who are void of any culture. They hate us because we are Mississippi, not because a jury will give a dude a fair shake against a multi-national corporation.

And, finally, most legal analysts agree that the abuses of Big Insurance to our residents after Katrina are largely related to the protections that Governor Barbour, Charlie Ross and their behind-the-scenes profiteers passed to protect corporate wrongdoers from regular old Mississippians. I resent them penalizing my Coast neighbors like that. I hate them for abusing my four kids like that.

Lex Taylor, my friend, I still love ya, but you’re as wrongheaded on this issue as you have ever been. Even if you can still pull a rabbit out of a hat.

[You may obtain the full “Tall Tales from Tejas” legislative memo by writing Lance Stevens at lstevens@stevensandward.com]

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