As a small business owner, I was dismayed to read the recent Star editorial renouncing new tort-reform laws (“Open for business in Alabama,” June 7). The Star’s normally keen reasoning seems to have temporarily departed faster than justice leaving the notorious Sonny Hornsby/Terry Butts kangaroo State Supreme Court, which trial lawyers rode like a horse and milked like a cow. Trial lawyers ruled the Alabama Supreme Court roughly from 1987 until 2000.
That trial-lawyer driven court made Alabama a national anti-business symbol and a place for employers to avoid. Even liberal Time magazine called us “a trial lawyer paradise and a business nightmare,” and Forbes magazine in 1996 named Alabama the original “tort hell.” Our business developers vying with other states for new industry saw news sheets waved around that announced routine budget-breaking Alabama lawsuit awards. One feels it had effects.
Once, when the U.S. Supreme Court grew alarmed at the way lawsuit compensatory damages were being dwarfed by punitive damages, it studied five cases nationwide. Three of them came from Alabama. We had to offer exorbitant incentive packages to get industries even to look at Alabama.
Alabama saw a $2 million auto paintjob final verdict over a $600 claim, “drive-by” national class certifications absent even a notice to the defendant, and $581 million awarded for an alleged $1,200 overcharge for a satellite dish. That award in May 1999 made Hyundai reconsider its decision to come to Alabama. It might’ve stepped away had not the state Legislature passed some tort reform.
Things had to change.
For years, newspaper editorials said Alabama’s economy and jobs climate would improve if laws were passed to stop lawsuit abuse. Finally, state legislators passed three reforms — capping some punitive damages, reforming class-action lawsuits and stopping the personal-injury lawyers’ practice of moving cases to counties with friendly courts.
It was then that our economy began to improve, as predicted. More automobile industries and ThyssenKrupp brought jobs here; overall salaries improved.
Alabama’s success isn’t an isolated example. Legal reforms in Texas brought in 1,500 new doctors. Georgia and Florida reforms made worker-comp costs drop dramatically.
And now that Alabama’s tort laws are further improved, our economy will strengthen even more. The common sense laws:
• Only those who manufacture a hazardous product are liable for that product. If someone breaks a tooth on a rock in a pack of peanuts from Mom and Pop’s cornerstore, Mom and Pop cannot be sued, just the manufacturer.
• Wrongful-death lawsuits can only be brought in the jurisdiction where the lawsuit would’ve been lodged were the deceased still living. Duh.
• Guidelines are set for testimony for “expert witness,” giving judges more leeway to exempt “junk science.” It’s hoped the law would prohibit chicanery like that of the infamous Beasley firm in Montgomery, which ended up with taco sauce on its face for its own “testing” of Taco Bell tacos.
• Reduced from 12 percent to 7.5 percent the rate of post-judgment interest, which a defendant must pay on a lawsuit verdict on appeal. Ross Systems, an Atlanta software company, recently got socked with a $61 million verdict by a Franklin County court. It was home cooking for Russellville’s Sunshine Mills.
Ross is under the gun for interest piling up at $20,000 a day. Ross and its Chinese ownership are questioning why they came to Alabama, and reports of this travesty have gone out over Xinhua, the Chinese version of the Associated Press. It harms Alabama attempts to bring more Chinese industry.
The intent of tort-reform legislation has never been to protect business from fair lawsuits. Alabama Voters Against Lawsuit Abuse favors fair lawsuits and outcomes 100 percent. Even the president of Alabama’s trial-lawyer association said the new tort laws are fair and don’t compromise plaintiff access to courts.
While we disagree in this instance with The Star’s always-persuasive point of view, we hope our facts set the record right in this matter. We bow to the excellence of The Star, its editorial page, its staff and most of all its nationally lauded icon, Publisher H. Brandt Ayers.
Lewis Fuller of Gadsden operates a medical supply business and is chairman of Alabama Voters Against Lawsuit Abuse.
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