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Limits on Lawsuit Abuse

Pennsylvania must enact reforms to make the state’s legal system fair, predictable, and even-handed. True, permanent, and comprehensive legal reform would create jobs and stimulate investment in the Commonwealth while actually reducing the expenses of state, municipal, and school district governments. Injured parties must be treated fairly, but justice doesn’t have to come at a price that threatens innovation, competition, and profitability.

For the second year in a row Pennsylvania has landed on the top of the American Tort Reform Association’s (ATRA) 2023/24 shameful pile of “Judicial Hellholes,” courtesy of the anti-business fervor of two of its courts. Philadelphia’s Court of Common Pleas and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court are not only guilty of awarding and sustaining excessive ...
A return to the no-good old days when plaintiffs’ lawyers were given wide latitude in where they could file medical malpractice lawsuits has been in effect for only six months, and already health care providers and civil justice reformers have seen enough. The return of venue, or forum, “shopping” has quickly resulted in a spike ...
The General Assembly is again poised to deliver a common sense request from Pennsylvania’s businesses, health care providers, and others by passing a limited and specific liability shield against opportunistic trial lawyers looking to exploit the pandemic as a business opportunity. This week, the House approved “safe harbor” legislation that would protect businesses, health care ...
Pennsylvania’s billboard lawyers are drooling over the potential end to a rule that requires medical malpractice lawsuits to be tried in the county where the harm is alleged to have occurred. The reform was enacted in 2003 to help stop a medical malpractice insurance crisis that was closing hospitals and sending doctors out of state. ...
Pennsylvania health care providers and the public — as patients and future patients – received a reprieve when the Supreme Court agreed to delay reverting to a pre-2003 administrative rule allowing venue-shopping. Under current law, a medical malpractice lawsuit must be filed in the county where the harm is alleged to have occurred. If this ...
Last week Governor Tom Wolf vetoed SB 1172, saying that the proposed changes to Pennsylvania’s Price Gouging Act would undermine consumer protections during a declared emergency, when the law kicks in automatically. Taking the governor’s veto message in its literal sense would mean that 235 of 253 lawmakers who voted for the bill (including nearly ...
The outing club can no longer go outside. It seems like a punchline to a bad joke, but in this case it’s the sad reality of the world we live in, and of the environment the productive sector faces every day. After a risk assessment, Penn State University (PSU) last week severed itself from a ...
In another year of flipping the couch cushions for spare change to balance a state budget, efforts to reduce lawsuit abuse are more important than ever. These needed reforms can greatly enhance Pennsylvania’s business competitiveness without costing the commonwealth a single dime. A newly formed group, the Pennsylvania Coalition for Civil Justice Reform (PCCJR), will ...
The self-created image of public sector unions as the protector-of-the-little guy is being expertly debunked by a new reform group. A series of legal actions brought by the Harrisburg-based public interest law center, The Fairness Center, reveal an ugly pattern of union bullying and trampling over laws and individual rights. The cases show that unions ...
The story behind the only override of a Bill Clinton veto is a cautionary one if another Clinton occupies the White House. The legislation Congress enacted in 1995 over a Clinton veto, the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, was in response to the trial lawyers rampaging through U.S. corporations with securities class action lawsuits. Clinton ...