Jackpot Justice +20: Tort reform’s impact on Mississippi

Over the subsequent few weeks, Y’all Politics will likely be sharing interviews and articles associated to the passage of tort reform that occurred 20 years in the past within the longest particular session in Mississippi historical past. 

Y’all Politics will likely be speaking with key gamers from that 2002 particular session and the years to comply with, outlining tort reform’s affect on each the authorized neighborhood and Mississippi politics on this collection we’re calling “Jackpot Justice +20.”

Twenty years in the past at this time, over breakfast, then-Governor Ronnie Musgrove instructed a bunch of trial legal professionals who had lengthy supported his campaigns and the campaigns of his fellow Mississippi Democrats that he would convene a particular session of the Legislature to enact tort reform.  The stress to take action, Musgrove would later say, was simply too nice.

What would then transpire, regardless of the objections voiced within the room that morning, modified the face of Mississippi politics, and maybe the authorized neighborhood, greater than every other single motion ever taken by the Legislature.

Through the years, trial legal professionals had been in a position to rake in thousands and thousands of {dollars} in settlements from utilizing the court docket system in progressive methods in private harm instances towards hospitals, industries and companies of all sizes.  Private harm and mass tort was large enterprise, a lot so the state was recognized throughout America for its “jackpot justice.”

Quite a lot of these trial legal professionals turned unimaginably wealthy, politically highly effective, and nationally well-known – some even notorious – through the years, names like Dickie Scruggs, Joey Langston, and Paul Minor.  Practically all trial legal professionals on the time fundraised and gave generously to Democrats and Democratic Occasion causes throughout Mississippi, successfully peddling their affect on the state and native ranges to maintain the state favorably blue whereas rising their bottom-line with relative ease.  Being a trial lawyer turned synonymous with being a Democrat.

But, the occasions have been altering.  Following large payouts from asbestos instances within the late Nineteen Eighties and early Nineties and product legal responsibility lobbying from the tobacco business in 1992 and 1993, the Mississippi Legislature took up a model of tort reform that addressed private harm legal guidelines, however the 1993 laws did not cap jury awards to a plaintiff.  On the time, it was heralded as a compromise between the enterprise and the authorized particular pursuits.

Nevertheless, trial legal professionals continued to govern the system and capitalize on free Mississippi legal guidelines, giving them much more excessive greenback wins and enormous multimillion greenback payouts.  Maybe essentially the most well-known of those instances was the Large Tobacco case that even turned a Hollywood film that includes Al Pacino and Russell Crowe in 1999.  These courtroom wins enabled the trial legal professionals to proceed to fund sympathetic Democrats throughout the state, chief amongst them have been former Lawyer Basic Mike Moore and Musgrove.

Musgrove was to be the trial legal professionals’ buddy within the Governor’s Mansion.  An legal professional himself, Musgrove had been a state senator after which Lieutenant Governor.  His 1999 election for Governor was the closest election in Mississippi historical past as neither he nor Republican Mike Parker received a majority of the favored vote.  State regulation mandated, on the time, that the ultimate resolution be made by the Home of Representatives.  The Democratic majority within the Home, backed in massive measure by the trial legal professionals’ political motion committee, swiftly put ahead Musgrove and his trial lawyer donors celebrated.

So, when Musgrove known as his trial lawyer friends in on that August 23, 2002, morning, a little bit over a yr earlier than the subsequent statewide election, to inform them of his resolution to name a particular session to take up tort reform in a extra substantive method than tried a decade earlier, the trial legal professionals couldn’t imagine the Democrat Governor that they had backed would give in and upset their political machine.

However Musgrove was proper.  The political headwinds had gotten too sturdy to not take up the laws.  Mississippi’s medical and enterprise surroundings was considered as essentially the most hostile within the nation when being sued.  Buyers have been cautious of organising store in Mississippi.  Docs have been refusing to deal with trial legal professionals and their households.  Hospitals feared shedding their staffs and having to shut services or cut back service.  Enterprise house owners have been up in arms in each a part of the state, worrying if a fall by a buyer would imply they might lose their livelihoods.  Even former President George W. Bush spoke on the necessity for tort reform within the state on a go to that 2002 summer season.

What ensued when Governor Musgrove known as in lawmakers was an eighty-three-day particular session, the longest in state historical past, that produced a extra steady enterprise and medical local weather within the state that settled fears.  It additionally completely undermined the first supply of funding for Democrats in Mississippi by proscribing massive payouts for trial legal professionals, the principle contributors to the Democratic Occasion, and solidified Republican assist throughout the enterprise neighborhood, assist that continues to this present day.

That doesn’t imply Musgrove, for his half, didn’t attempt his finest to seize enterprise assist and placed on a very good face following the vote.  He did.  Upon signing the invoice into regulation, he was quoted within the L.A. Instances as saying, “What we’ve got signed is one thing that may give a good, stage enjoying subject to our system in Mississippi… A message has been despatched to the remainder of the world about doing enterprise in Mississippi.  This can be a good place to do enterprise.”

However it was not sufficient, and the trial legal professionals and his Democrat base weren’t shopping for it.

“Reform is a misnomer,” David Baria, the president of the Mississippi Trial Legal professionals Affiliation and eventual Democratic state senator and consultant instructed the L.A. Instances following tort reform’s passage.  “To cap punitive damages is to say to company America that they will injure or kill folks and be held much less accountable than within the majority of states on this nation.”

Baria went on to say that the Legislature spoke and instructed residents that, “It’s extra necessary to make Mississippi business-friendly than to make it a spot the place companies are accountable.”

Fact be instructed, that fateful breakfast assembly known as by Musgrove was the start of the tip for the Mississippi Democratic Occasion.  The results of tort reform’s passing could be extra election losses by Mississippi Democrats to Republicans in 2003 than in any cycle since Reconstruction.  Twenty years later, Democrats nonetheless haven’t recovered.

In 2003, a local son of Yazoo Metropolis who had made a reputation for himself in nationwide Republican politics would return house to problem Musgrove for Governor.  Though a tort reform package deal had handed the Legislature that Fall of 2002, Haley Barbour made it a main theme in his 2003 marketing campaign, saying the state wanted to go additional to guard docs, hospitals, companies and industries.  That message continued to resonate with voters.

Mississippi voters now completely linked trial legal professionals with Democrats, in an identical method as they do labor unions and trainer unions.  The messaging caught.  Musgrove, the Democrat incumbent who had known as that 2002 particular session, noticed no political upside from tort reform’s passage; if something, Democrats walked away from him.  Barbour would beat Musgrove handily in November 2003, profitable 53% to 46%, organising a twenty-year run for Republicans because the state’s chief government.

Barbour, the brand new Republican Governor, could be sworn-in in January 2004 and simply months later name a particular session of his personal to go one other spherical of tort reform laws, additional solidifying the tip of trial legal professionals’ maintain on each the authorized system and Mississippi politics.

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Y’all Politics will likely be sharing a dialog with authors Andy Taggart and Jere Nash who wrote “Mississippi Politics: The Battle for Energy, 1976-2006,” which a big a part of this text relies on with their permission. You could find the Second Version of their guide for buy on Amazon right here.