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Tort reform battle heats up in Missouri as Washington gets involved

Ad battle begins as legislation moves forward

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The U.S. Chamber has not been shy about their support for tort reform measures promoted by Republicans in the Missouri General Assembly through the chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform. They have rolled out their own advertisements as an online and television ad campaign and become involved at the state level in promoting these changes.

The institute’s executive vice president, Harold Kim, said in a January letter to the editor in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that legal reforms being debated would stop Missouri’s courts from becoming venues of choice and keep out-of-state plaintiffs from using Missouri’s courts. He added the reforms would improve expert witness standards and more accurately assess medical costs in lawsuits.

“A 2015 survey of businesses found Missouri’s lawsuit environment ranked 42nd worst in the nation,” Kim wrote in conclusion. “Gov. Eric Greitens and the Legislature understand that a strong business climate is incompatible with a broken lawsuit system.”

Last week, Missouri Rising, a conservative political organization, also launched a new advertising campaign urging lawmakers and their constituents to support tort reform. Missouri Rising is the first and thus far only state-focused branch of America Rising, a D.C.-based PAC.

However, the Missouri Association of Trial Attorneys (MATA) is looking now to fight back, with a campaign of their own called Balance the Scales. Jeannie Brandstetter is the Communications Director at Missouri Association of Trial Attorneys and says the campaign is more in response the comments from American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) that Missouri is a “judicial hellhole” than a direct push back against Missouri Rising’s campaign.

“We typically take a pummeling from these pro-tort reform entities and just decided it was time to take this public,” she said. “What we are doing is telling stories about clients, telling the general public what some of the legislators in JC are trying to do at the behest, apparently, of their donors.”

Brandstetter said the campaign would focus on stories of people who had suffered discrimination or injury because of an employers’ action and focus on what the consequences of passing some parts of the tort reform package would be. The campaign is so far focusing on SB 43 and 45, both offered by Sen. Gary Romine, as well as HB 156 from Rep. Kevin Corlew.

SB 43 would change provisions in Missouri’s Human Rights Act, which critics say would make it more difficult for wronged employees to sue for damages in cases of discrimination, while SB 45 and HB 156 would change arbitration agreements between employers and at-will employees. SB 45 will be heard in the House Legislative Oversight Committee next week and SB 43 was referred to the Special House Committee on Litigation Reform just before the legislative spring break.

Brandstetter believes those bills will hurt Missouri workers.

“It’s almost to a point where we live in a world where they want to find a way where it’s cheaper to hurt, cheat, steal from the average citizen,” Brandstetter said. “And people do die. There’s a reason the Ford Pinto isn’t on the road anymore… They talk about jobs and business, but at what risk?”

However, other major tort reform measures have already made it to the governor’s desk. Corlew’s bill to change Missouri’s expert witness standard to the Daubert standard passed through the House just before the break. Rep. Joe Don McGaugh, who has had a piece of legislation pass through the House changing Missouri’s collateral source rule said in February these kinds of changes are necessary to ensure fairness for all in Missouri’s courts.

“We continue to see reports coming out of not only St. Louis, but all the state of Missouri, that employers are looking at the tort environment in the state,” McGaugh said, after his bill passed. “This is a small step to equalize the courts to make it fair not only for plaintiffs but defendants.

“It’s a common sense approach.”