Public Backs Many Tort Reforms
Most Americanswhile recognizing the social benefits of the civil-justice systemnonetheless support efforts to reform the nation's controversial personal-injury and class-action litigation structure, a report by the Insurance Research Council contends.
The report is based on a pair of surveys conducted last year. In the two surveys, IRC observed, most respondents showed strong support for litigation reform in general as well as for specific reform initiatives for personal-injury and class-actionswith some 78 percent agreeing that class-action reform is warranted. This is up from 70 percent three years earlier (see graphs).
Among the highlights not shown in the graphs:
64 percent of those surveyed agreed that states should implement some limits on pain-and-suffering awards in personal-injury lawsuits.
62 percent said juries for personal-injury cases should be given information about payments to plaintiffs from other sources, such as health insurance or workers compensation.
59 percent agreed that a judge should be allowed to cut awards in personal-injury suits by the amount of such collateral payments.
"This study shows that the public supports reforms such as clearer class-action settlement notices, limits to attorneys fees and sanctions against frivolous lawsuits," according to Elizabeth Sprinkel, senior vice president of IRC, which is a nonprofit division of the American Institute for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters and the Insurance Institute of America.
Ms. Sprinkel also noted that more than half of respondents supported reforms to prevent venue-shopping by attorneys seeking a favorable outcome for their lawsuits in a more plaintiff-friendly state court system.
The report from the Malvern, Pa.-based IRC is based on two surveys conducted last year. The first, in June 2003, contacted 2,001 U.S. adults, while the secondwhich focused more specifically on the topic of pain-and-suffering awards in personal-injury and class-action suitsinvolved interviews with 1,012 adults over the phone last December.
Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, April 16, 2004. Copyright 2004 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.
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