Copyright 1999 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.
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Plain Dealer
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August 17, 1999 Tuesday, FINAL / ALL
SECTION: NATIONAL; Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 1033 words
HEADLINE:
HIGH COURT STRIKES DOWN LEGISLATURE'S TORT REFORM ;
JUSTICES SAY LAW WAS AN ASSAULT ON OHIO'S COURTS
BYLINE: By T.C. BROWN; and THOMAS SUDDES; PLAIN DEALER
BUREAU
DATELINE: COLUMBUS
BODY:
In a scathing ruling aimed squarely at the
Ohio legislature's Republicans, a bitterly divided Ohio Supreme Court yesterday
junked a 1996 law intended to limit the money injured Ohioans could win in
lawsuits.
Two high court Republicans united with the court's two
Democrats in a 4-3 decision that said the 1996 "tort-reform" law - a campaign
promise that helped win Ohio's House for Republicans for the first time since
1972 - was an assault on Ohio's court system. In spiking the 1996 bill, which
drew yes votes from only two of the 56 Democrats then in the legislature,
Democratic Justice Alice Robie Resnick, writing yesterday for the majority, said
it was "no ordinary ... legislation."
She said the bill's passage was
"openly subversive of the separation of powers and, in particular, of the
judicial system" established by the Ohio Constitution.
Concurring in
Resnick's demolition of the bill were fellow Democratic Justice Francis E.
Sweeney and Republican Justices Andy Douglas and Paul E. Pfeifer.
The
bipartisan coalition also cited Ohio's "one-subject" rule on the content of
legislation, the same reason justices gave May 27 for voiding, at least
temporarily, Cleveland's school-voucher pilot.
In a procedural twist,
the tort-reform case was brought not by an injured Ohioan claiming to be
shortchanged by the law but by the Ohio AFL-CIO and by the Ohio Academy of Trial
Lawyers.
The academy's members represent injured Ohioans in lawsuits.
The academy told the court it had lost dues-paying members, and its members had
lost fees and clients, because of the 1996 law.
Although the high court
said that wasn't why it took up the case directly, it was an extraordinary
end-run around Ohio's lower courts.
"I think this is the Ohio Supreme
Court's finest hour," said Don C. Iler, one of the attorneys who represented the
trial lawyers. "The function of the Supreme Court is to protect Ohioans against
governmental abuse and protect the public against legislative abuse."
The Supreme Court had long been expected to veto the law on
constitutional grounds, though not necessarily on those the majority cited
yesterday.
Moreover, the tone of the decision seemed likely to worsen
the nominally Republican court's relations with the Republican-dominated Ohio
General Assembly. They are already poisoned by rulings on school-finance.
Republican Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer, who opposed yesterday's
decision, said the majority was in a "war of words" with the General Assembly.
"In referring to the General Assembly with inflammatory and accusatory
language, the majority appears to be throwing down the gauntlet to that co-equal
... branch of government," he wrote.
The ruling was praised by the
Senate's No.2 Democrat, State Sen. Leigh Herington of Portage County, and by the
AFL-CIO.
William A. Burga, the AFL-CIO's president, said, "The ... court
has reminded the ... legislature that 'justice for all' means just that -
justice for ordinary people as well as powerful business interests.' Herrington
said, "If ever there were a poster-child for Republican excess, it is tort
reform."
But business lobbies and Republican leaders expressed
disappointment and vowed to craft a new law.
Linda S. Woggon, an Ohio
Chamber of Commerce vice president, said the ruling was another step in the
court's remaking of itself as a super-legislature.
"Ohio legislators
might as well shut up shop and go home," she said. "Under the guise of
separation of powers, the ... court has boldly made the judicial branch first
among equals."
Said another top Statehouse lobbyist, Roger Geiger of the
National Federation of Independent Business, "I think it shows that the court is
spinning out of control."
The 1996 tort reform bill, sponsored by State
Rep. Patrick Tiberi, a Columbus Republican, was backed by a coalition of
business and insurance lobbies weary of purportedly frivolous lawsuits and
overly generous Ohio juries.
The new law did not cap lawsuit awards for
an injured person's actual dollars-and-cents losses, such as medical bills,
property damage or lost wages.
But the bill did, except in the most
severe cases, cap "pain and suffering" damages at $250,000 to $500,000.
The bill also capped punitive damages, which aim to punish a defendant's
misconduct, at $100,000 unless a defendant employed 26 or more people. In such
cases, punitive damages were capped at from $250,000 to three times a
plaintiff's dollars-and-cents losses.
The court said yesterday both caps
undermine the right of trial by jury because the 1996 law required judges to
limit jury awards to the caps, letting the will of the legislature override the
decisions of Ohio juries.
Resnick said the 1996 law specifically ignored
or overturned a series of Ohio Supreme Court rulings that had, on constitutional
grounds, blocked previous attempts in 1975 and 1987 to curb personal-injury
lawsuits in Ohio.
"The General Assembly has chosen to circumvent our
mandates, while attempting to establish itself as the final arbiter of the
validity of its own legislation ... [and] has, in several places, re-enacted
legislation which this court has already determined to be unconstitutional," she
said, calling it a "a threat to judicial independence."
In his
blistering dissent, Republican Moyer accused the court's majority of radically
rewriting the Ohio Supreme Court's own rules by taking a case that no lower
court ever actually heard.
He warned that may encourage countless other
plaintiffs, irked by one new law or another, to sue directly (and frivolously)
in the Supreme Court - something Resnick countered her majority would guard
against.
Moreover, said Moyer, the two plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit
- the AFL-CIO and trial lawyers - weren't themselves personally injured by the
1996 law, the usual requirement for challenging a law.
Moyer, joined by
fellow Republican Justices Deborah Cook and Evelyn Lundberg Stratton, also
disapprovingly cited Resnick's jabs at the General Assembly.
"[The]
statements are unwarranted and have no place in an opinion of this court," Moyer
said, adding that the majority unnecessarily construed legislators' actions in
the most negative light.
LOAD-DATE: August 18, 1999
