After a last-minute scramble to pass the business lobby’s top priority for the regular session, Republican legislators quickly realized they mangled the language of the bill aimed at limiting damage claims against insurance companies in car wreck lawsuits.
Now, GOP lawmakers are spending time in a 30-day special session that was supposed to focus on the budget and taxes amid the coronavirus pandemic instead trying to clean up their problems with the bill and to persuade Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards to sign the changes into law.
The special session began Monday evening immediately after the regular session ended.
Supporters of the sweeping changes to Louisiana’s civil litigation system pitched the proposal as a way to lower insurance rates by making it less lucrative to sue over car accidents. But in the flurry of final rewrites to the legislation amid negotiations with the Edwards administration, lawmakers added language that could cause even larger damage awards in some of those lawsuits.
Rep. Kirk Talbot, the River Ridge Republican who handled the so-called tort reform bill, downplayed the problem today. He called it a mistake and said lawmakers can rewrite the problematic provision in a second bill in the special session and send that to Edwards.
“We’ll be fine,” Talbot says. “That’s any easy tweak, and we know we have another 30 days.”
But Edwards—whose allies and campaign contributors include personal injury lawyers—hasn’t said what action he’ll take on the first bill, if he’ll veto it or whether he’ll go along with the adjustments GOP lawmakers want to make. He’s expected to discuss the legislation Wednesday at an afternoon news conference. It’s unclear if Republican lawmakers could get the two-thirds House and Senate vote required to override an Edwards veto if the governor takes that action.
The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, a primary backer of the legislation, is urging Edwards to sign the bill and work with lawmakers on the language fix. If the governor vetoes the measure, LABI President Stephen Waguespack said in a statement on Twitter that he expects lawmakers to “send additional measures to his desk during this special session, to ultimately fix Louisiana’s broken legal system and lower auto insurance rates.” Read the full story.
