As Congress prepares to vacate for a week-long fall break in early October, Senate efforts to reform our legal liability system are heating up. Burning the Bridges to Madison County:
Legal Reform Heats Up

Author Robert James Waller popularized Madison County, Iowa – the birthplace of John Wayne – in the novel The Bridges of Madison County. But another Madison County, this one in Illinois, is famous for a very different, but just as lucrative, reason. Madison County – Illinois, that is – is the unofficial class action capital of the United States; the single county where trial lawyers file more class action lawsuits than anywhere else, and also home to some of the country’s largest damage awards.

But even the judges in Madison County, Illinois, joined by those in the "jury jackpot" state of Mississippi, the malpractice insurance-troubled state of West Virginia, and most other states in between, may soon get some well-needed relief from their class-action crowded, litigation-happy dockets. As Congress prepares to vacate for a week-long fall break in early October, Senate efforts to reform our legal liability system are heating up.

Shortly after the Senate finishes with a backlog of appropriations bills, it is expected to move legal reform up to the front burner and offer, as the first course, a bill that proposes to remove from state courts and send to federal courts class action suits when at least $5 million is at stake and when fewer than two-thirds of class members live in the same state as the defendant. Other measures include an industry-funded compensation fund for asbestos victims and a toned-down version of the malpractice bill blocked this summer in the Senate, which would have capped non-economic damages in malpractice lawsuits at $250,000.

Offering a proverbial shot-in-the-arm to legal reform efforts, President Bush used his weekly radio address last Saturday to renew his campaign to get Congress to establish reasonable limits on lawsuits that he maintains are drastically raising health care costs for everyone. As part of his six-point plan to strengthen America’s economy and create new jobs, President Bush further noted that "we need to address the broader problems of frivolous litigation. We need effective legal reforms that will make sure that settlement money from class actions and other litigation goes to those harmed, and not to trial lawyers."

Stay tuned as the bridges continue to burn between legal reform advocates and trial lawyers. Maybe Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood will sign on for a sequel to Bridges of Madison County, albeit this time a legal thriller with no romance.

September 25, 2003
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