Copyright 1999 Times Publishing Company
St.
Petersburg Times
February 21, 1999, Sunday
SECTION: PERSPECTIVE; COLUMNS; Pg. 3D
LENGTH: 932 words
HEADLINE:
'Tort reform' a lousy deal for consumers
BYLINE: MARTIN DYCKMAN
BODY:
Whoever pays the piper gets to call the tune. So when Florida's big
business lobbies bought themselves a Legislature that would protect them from
being sued by the injured and the dead, they gave their project a name that has
stuck: "Tort Reform." That is how much of the media continues to mislabel
it, contributing to the misimpression that the other side, the trial lawyers,
are the bad guys.
Some of them may be, but at least they're our bad
guys. The public aren't disinterested spectators in this clash of titans, though
most legislators hope you will think so. It's about what happens to us after the
ambulance or coroner comes. If the pols get away with it:
You're
broadsided by a rental car driven by a drunken tourist who has no insurance.
Your spouse is killed, you can't work for a year and your kid is permanently
brain-damaged. Now, the rental company has deep pockets. After the Legislature
is through, $ 800,000 will be the limit of its liability - in most cases, only $
300,000 - no matter how many people are hurt or killed. Wayne Huizenga, who owns
two rental car companies, has contributed at least $ 578,000 to Florida
politicians and political parties over the past three years.
If he needs
a liability cap, why not people who drive their own cars? Your liability remains
unlimited. Companies that profit from renting something as dangerous as a motor
vehicle may have a claim to some sort of limit, but it ought to be a lot higher
and apply only if their customers are well-insured.
You're left for dead
by an armed robber in the supermarket parking lot. The thugs hit often before
the management hired security guards. But the guards were let go after the 1999
Legislature stipulated other, less expensive ways for commercial property owners
to fulfill their "duty" to the public.
Experts, including the
Consumer Product Safety Commission, have been warning for years about an
escalator danger called "sidewall entrapment." There's a simple fix, but
the manufacturers didn't want to spend the money, so your daughter, who really
loved her ballet lessons, loses a big toe. The manufacturer is blameless because
the device was made and installed more than 12 years ago.
The same would
be true for airplanes or any other products that go bad because of design
defects or inferior manufacture that take more than 12 years - or 18, in the
Senate bill - to show up.
Even in cases where the time hadn't run out,
manufacturers would be shielded from paying more than $ 250,000 in punitive
damages except in rare cases.
There really is a little ballerina who
lost most of her big toe. Her name is Marissa Davis, she was 6 when it happened,
and her parents, Wayne and Kathy Davis of St. Petersburg, have been trying to
help the trial lawyers fight the bill even though it wouldn't affect their
lawsuit.
Gov. Lawton Chiles vetoed a similar bill last year, citing the
12-year "statute of repose" as one of his reasons. It was one of the best
reasons he had. Few of the things that can hurt people - except, notably, cheap
handguns - are made in this state.
"This provision will shield large,
out-of-state manufacturers from liability at the expense of Florida consumers,
and I cannot allow it to become law," Chiles wrote.
But Jeb Bush
was elected to succeed him, and the business lobbies helped elect an
even-friendlier Legislature. New bills are on fast tracks in both houses. In
some ways, they are better than last year, in some ways they are worse, and in
too many they are the same.
The Davises were cheered in one respect:
"Statute of repose" wasn't in the Senate bill at first. They watched in
dismay last week as a Senate committee wrote it in. Afterward, they had angry
words with Majority Leader Jack Latvala, R-Palm Harbor, who had gone along with
the amendment by Sens. John Laurent, R-Bartow, and Al Gutman, R-Miami.
(It had to be Gutman. No legislator shills more shamelessly for special
interests. He got $ 5,500 in 1998 campaign contributions from Associated
Industries of Florida, the chief drum-beater for "tort reform," and its
corporate affiliates.)
Latvala told the Davises that escalators are
considered part of the real estate and already subject to a 15-year statute of
repose. This is what the business lobbies and some Senate lawyers say, too. The
trial lawyers emphatically disagree.
Davis said Latvala was "visibly
shaken" by their encounter. Latvala says Mrs. Davis was "fairly
belligerent."
"We have a Legislature that is very heavily
business-oriented and a governor committed to signing the same bill that passed
last year," Latvala said Friday. "We have moved substantially in the public
interest when we changed it from 12 to 18 years. I think I should have been
congratulated by people like Wayne Davis when I worked that deal out, because it
would have passed at 12 years. . . . The House has it at 12 years, I'm trying to
improve it because of the concerns the Davises' raise, and the way I am
trying to improve it is to take control of it."
Bush did say he would
have signed the bill Chiles vetoed. He also expressed concern over the 12-year
repose and the punitive damage caps.
Though plenty of business big shots
are pushing "tort reform," it turned out to be a non-issue in the recent
St. Petersburg Times' 11th annual survey of Tampa Bay employers. When they
said what they wanted the new governor to do, education came first. Of the 128
executives interviewed, only one mentioned the litigation debate.
So to
whom - or what - is the Legislature listening? The people who called the tune.
LOAD-DATE: February 22, 1999
