Civil Justice Response Committee Call Notes
Monday, March 13, 2017, at 1:30pm Central time
Attending: Melisa Maisel Vanis, Mark Behrens, Mike Klatt, Leigh Ann Schell, Andy Kopon, Gord McKee
Preview of Upcoming Actions, Bills, Etc.
There was a flurry of activity at the Federal level last week.
The House passed 4 civil justice bills last week- on asbestos transparency, no injury class actions,
removal and joinder, LARA bill (lawsuit abuse reduction act).
Last year the House passed bills like this, and then they went to the Senate. In the Senate, unless
something is going to be offered as an amendment to another bill, you have to have 60 votes to bring a
bill to the floor- invoking cloture and breaking a filibuster. The Republicans have 2 fewer votes in the
Senate now than they did one year ago and couldn’t get the same bills passed. So, you would have to
find at a minimum 10 Democrats to vote with the Republicans on the above bills when tort reform has
become a very partisan issue.
Depending on who you talk to, people say there about 6 or 8 Democrats in seats in danger for reelection in 2018 and people believe that these people will run scared and vote along with Republicans
for the next two years because they don’t want to lose their seats. But most of the above issues are not
things that the public (ordinary citizens) would really know or care about.
Andy- he was just at the ABOTA round table, and the expert thought there was a good chance that we
would see caps in the medical malpractice area in upcoming legislation. Do you think the IADC needs to
be doing anything? Mark said we could reach out to the US Chamber, like we did last year on the class
actions bill.
Mark- the above is really a separate issue since this is being addressed in the context of repealing and
replacing the ACA. You could fold in something like this to a new health care bill, instead of passing a
stand-alone bill about this. When Clinton was president, and they were rolling out their healthcare bill,
there was an effort to get caps on damages then as well. But $250,000 wasn’t happening, more like
$500,000 or $1,000,000. The American Medical Association pulled the plug on this, because they would
rather not have a cap, then have a higher cap that would raise the cap in CA, or bolster efforts of people
in California to raise their cap, as CA has the most medical liability litigation.
In the States
Missouri- Mark is pretty confident that both Merchandise Practices Act and Adoption of Daubert
(although amendment for Daubert does not to apply for Bench Trials), will pass. The two that will have
bigger fights are Phantom Damages- jury gets to hear the amounts billed by the doctor and not just
what was paid, and the Venue and Joinder Bill (package of 4 reforms moving through the legislature at
once.)
MembershipMichele couldn’t make the call but Mark gave a plug for nominating new members.
Upcoming Meetings
Melisa gave a run-through of the upcoming Spring IADC meetings.
April 5-7; IADC/FDCC Joint Law Firm Management Conference in Chicago, IL
April 27-28; Corporate Counsel College in Chicago, IL
May 18; Professional Liability Roundtable in New York, NY (NYU Law School)
Registration for the Annual Meeting will be opening in early April.
Our next call will be on April 3, 2017 at 1:30pm Central