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Georgia House passes sound lawfare liability and tort reforms to save costs for consumers

ATLANTA,GA – Earlier today, the Georgia House of Representatives passed SB68, a civil justice reform bill to modernize liability standards for firms and help save costs for consumers by cutting down on frivolous lawsuits that raise prices for firms and businesses that serve them.

The bill caps non-economic damages in civil trials, adjusts liability standards for responsible establishments, and limits medical cost awards to “reasonable and necessary” amounts to keep price inflation in check.

The bill will now be reconciled with the Senate version before it is sent to Governor Brian Kemp, who has championed the law.

The Consumer Choice Center (CCC), a nonpartisan consumer advocacy group and think tank, applauded state legislators for enacting tort and liability reforms that will bring more certainty to innovators while reserving liability courts for consumers are who legitimately harmed.

“Every consumer pays the cost of unjustified litigation, whether they know it or not. Georgia’s novel attempt at reforming the civil justice system will help keep companies accountable while safeguarding the court process for consumers and victims who have been harmed,” said Yaël Ossowski, deputy director at the Consumer Choice Center.

“Exaggerated liability claims pursued by crafty attorneys creates massive price inflation for firms and insurers and deprives those who are legitimately injured from seeking adequate and timely justice,” he added. “A less costly and inflationary legal system for responsible entrepreneurs and innovators who follow the law will allow consumers to benefit from less litigious system that remains responsive to actual harms.”

This week, the Consumer Choice Center published a policy primer analyzing similar tort and liability reforms passed in Florida in 2023 that have shown positive impacts by lowering costs for consumers by creating a more stable environment for small businesses.

READ THE PRIMER HERE

The CCC represents consumers in over 100 countries across the globe. We closely monitor regulatory trends in state and national capitals, as well as other hotspots of regulation, and inform and activate consumers to fight for #ConsumerChoice.

Consumers deserve ‘auto choice’ to bring down insurance costs

Washington, D.C. – The Consumer Choice Center today launched its policy primer offering simple reforms to provide for more competitive, reasonable, and accurate insurance rates to increase choice and lower costs for consumers.

The primer, Fixing What’s Broken: Practical Consumer-Friendly Insurance Reforms to Save Money, focuses on two pressing issues for American consumers. First, it analyzes how insurance providers can adapt to the emerging scientific reality of tobacco harm reduction and consumer trends toward less harmful nicotine alternatives to smoking. Second, this primer explains different models for structuring consumer auto insurance and suggests how costly legal battles can be minimized, in turn lowering costs and premiums.

Yaël Ossowski, Deputy Director at the Consumer Choice Center, commented on the auto insurance policy recommendations, saying, “The legal nightmare that comes with every fender bender or more serious auto injury is known to every American, as they’re reminded by the slew of injury lawyer billboards on the interstate. Rather than subjecting every auto incident to a lawyer-led process that inevitably raises premiums, states and insurance firms should give consumers the right to choose whether they would prefer a tort or no-fault insurance model as is practiced in other countries and states.”

Attempts at legislation to offer “auto choice” to consumers have been introduced in all levels of state and federal government over the years, but have consistently been opposed by well-funded injury lawyers who see a threat to their business.

“For too long, we’ve allowed car insurance costs to balloon because of the adversarial nature of our highly litigious justice system, rather than understanding that most other countries do not force drivers into court after each accident. Giving auto insurance consumers the ability to choose between a no-fault and a tort system would allow flexibility, remove the adversarial declaration of liability that inflates lawsuits, and allows companies to compete for our business with the best policies and plans available. Best of all, good drivers with clean records would benefit from substantially lower premiums and simple plans,” added Ossowski.

Giving consumers the choice between a plan that requires legal negotiations between insurance companies to find blame and assign penalties, and a no-fault model that prioritizes quick and easy payouts without liability is a no-brainer that would bring immediate savings to consumers’ monthly premiums.

“Guided by state insurance commissioners, firms should offer alternatives to liability plans and allow consumers to choose the plan that works best for them as a perfect middle ground between enabling choice and reducing legal costs and headaches,” concluded Ossowski.

The policy primer can be read in full HERE.

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The Consumer Choice Center is an independent, nonpartisan consumer advocacy group championing the benefits of freedom of choice, innovation, and abundance in everyday life for consumers in over 100 countries. We closely monitor regulatory trends in Washington, Brussels, Ottawa, Brasilia, London, and Geneva. Find out more at www.consumerchoicecenter.org

Read this press release online.

Burned Tort Lawyers Plead Guilty to $200 Million Extortion Racket

Late last year, we covered the criminal case against Virginia-based attorney Timothy Litzenburg and his partners.

He was accused of approaching an international agrochemical company, presumably Bayer, the parent company of Monsanto, and threatening to weaponize the media and courts against them unless they gave his law firm $200 million.

The aim was to use recent verdicts to claim glyphosate, a key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup, is a dangerous carcinogen, even though hundreds of studies by reputable bodies, including the FDA, have said there is no evidence for that claim.

In court, it was revealed that Litzenburg’s firm threatened Monsanto by pitching them a massive “consulting agreement” that would make future cases against them from the firm invalid because of the conflict of interest. The hope was that the company would back down and the lawyers would make off with a huge payday.

Last Friday, Timothy Litzenburg, of Charlottesville, and his partner, Daniel Kincheloe each pleaded guilty to extortion after a short trial. They will face sentencing in September.

Litzenburg and Kincheloe also admitted that after making their demand for $200 million from the company, they registered a Virginia corporation for the purpose of receiving money from the company, and that they agreed to split the funds among themselves and their associates, and to not distribute any of the money the company paid them as purported “consulting fees” to their existing clients. Litzenburg and Kincheloe admitted that after making their demand for $200 million, Litzenburg threatened that they and others would commence litigation that would become “an ongoing and exponentially growing problem for [Company 1], particularly when the media inevitably takes notice[,]” and that such litigation would cost Company 1 and its publicly-traded parent company “billions, setting aside the associated drop in stock price and reputation damage.”
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This case is important because it peels back some layers on our nation’s vastly complicated tort or injury legal system, a pernicious cyclone of veiled threats, millions of dollars, unethical standards, and huge settlements to lawyers that often leave truly injured plaintiffs in the dust.

The incentives that exist in the American legal system make it possible for virtually any legal firm to trump up a case against companies or individuals. Often times, companies will choose to settle these cases for large amounts rather than have the case gain publicity, even if there was no actual harm or injury.

In a sense, the bigger a company is, the more likely they are to have a target on their back, no matter the claim that is brought up in court.

Though there are plenty of legitimate tort cases in which people have been harmed, there are just as many that are just outright frivolous and have no legal merit. Just think of the various cases against Google Maps because people took a wrong route and were struck by a car, or against Burger King because it’s meatless burgers aren’t really “vegan”.

Because the number of cases that can be heard by judges and juries is limited in a given year, the existence of these types of cases means that other cases, with real greviences won’t get heard.

And even if cases with real harms are eventually brought to court, it’s highly likely the plaintiffs will only receive a fraction of their deserved restitution.

It’s a system that overwhelmingly benefits injury lawyers at the expense of those they are supposed to represent.

Earlier this year, an analysis of large class-action lawsuits compiled by the law firm Jones Day found that that class members received an average of just 23 percent of eventual payouts — sometimes in the billions of dollars — and close to two-thirds went straight to lawyers instead.

These large settlements end up costing companies and the consumers that suffer from higher prices, not to mention the hundreds of potential plaintiffs who are not able to have their civil cases quickly heard.

Can you sue the ski hut where you contracted coronavirus?

European nations may be opening up their economies throughout the month of May, but that grand opening is likely to be dogged by the wave of COVID-19-related lawsuits.

We learned over the weekend that over 5,000 international tourists to the ski town of Ischgl, Austria are in the process of filing a lawsuit against the town and public officials. There are also being considered against ski resort owners in the area.

The lawsuit is being prepared by the Austrian Consumer Protection Association, which claims health authorities and the bar owners were “negligent” in not shutting down ski huts and restaurants earlier. They launched a website asking potential plaintiffs to share their information in order to join a future class-action lawsuit.

Often described as the “Ibiza of the Alps,” Ischgl made international headlines as an epicenter of the coronavirus crisis. At one particular venue, Kitzloch, a German bartender reportedly tested positive for coronavirus on March 7th. The bar closed its doors two days later. The town went into lockdown on March 13th. Tyrolean Governor Günther Platter then issued a province-wide quarantine on March 18th.

By the end of March, nearly 1,000 cases across Europe could be traced back to the resort town, and as many of 1,500 to the region itself.

The complaint states that the delay from the first known case until the ski town was ordered into lockdown was “negligible” and that authorities should have “known of a threat of mass infection”. Some have even blamed “greed” and “toxic business” as the reason local officials and business owners waited before shuttering doors. But as covered above, ski lodges and restaurants shut before provincial and national lockdowns ordered them to.

The first death in Austria from the coronavirus wasn’t until March 12, after which the town of Ischgl went into complete lockdown. The national lockdown went into effect four days later.

Is this enough to make a case against ski huts and villages where tourists contracted coronavirus?

As my colleague Linda Kavuka has pointed out, the current pandemic is a living and breathing example of Force Majeure, an Act of God that indemnifies certain parties in lawsuits and breaches of contract because it is simply “beyond the control” of any person or organization.

That said, there are legitimate questions to be asked: should ski towns have shuttered their doors and closed down bars and restaurants earlier? Likely. But we simply didn’t have the same information then as we do now.

And considering the very disturbing revelations about obfuscation of information by both the Chinese Communist Party and the World Health Organization at the outset of this crisis, it’s hard to place blame solely at the feet of local mayors and ski hut owners in the Alps.

(That’s why the U.S. states of Mississippi and Missouri have filed lawsuits against China.)

Of course, the fact that any skier or holiday goer would contract the coronavirus at a place where they were supposed to be enjoying themselves is a tragedy. Many people unknowingly spread the virus, were hospitalized themselves and died as a result. No one can excuse that loss of life and the grief that ensues.

But what we must hold uphold, in this situation and many more to come, is the facts and cases we allow to enter our legal system and our courts.

Classifying or assigning claims of negligence in the pandemic could likely mean thousands of unwitting public officials, business owners, and individuals will be held liable for what they didn’t know at the time. That would be a dangerous precedent.

We’ve often covered the incredibly litigious culture in the United States’ tort law system and articulated to reasons to reform it. Now, it seems, we’ll have to spread that same message throughout the European continent.

Georgia House passes sound lawfare liability and tort reforms to save costs for consumers

READ THE PRIMER HERE

Consumers deserve ‘auto choice’ to bring down insurance costs

Burned Tort Lawyers Plead Guilty to $200 Million Extortion Racket

Can you sue the ski hut where you contracted coronavirus?

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