Group pushes tort reform in South Texas

The American Tort Reform Association rated the Rio Grande Valley among the nation’s “judicial hellholes” for the sixth year in a row, claiming biased judges and lawsuit abuse consistently benefit local plaintiffs to the detriment of corporate defendants.

Despite tort reforms, ATRA wrote that “personal injury lawyers in Jefferson, Brazoria, Cameron, Hidalgo, Nueces, Starr and Zapata counties continue to reinvent themselves.”

“Despite strong statewide legislative reforms enacted in 2004, this area stubbornly refuses to shed its judicial hellholes reputation,” ATRA’s report states. The group was co-founded in 1986 by the American Medical Association and the American Council of Engineering Companies.

Tort-reform advocate Bill Summers, president and founder of the Rio Grande Valley Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, believes that significant strides have been made and that the Rio Grande Valley generally, and that Cameron County didn’t get due credit from ATRA.

“Cameron County deserves a big apology,” Summers said Tuesday.

Willie Chapman, with the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, said that ATRA is not for reform. “They are for pro-defendant changes to serve the interests of their members — among them the insurance, chemical drug and tobacco industries.”

Chapman also noted that the ATRA report is short on credible research, noting that ATRA attacked West Virginia in 2005 on a case filed in another state. “Considering the source of this report and this example, everything in this report should be closely scrutinized for inaccuracies,” Chapman said.

In this year’s report, ATRA cited a surge of personal injury cases relating to dredging work at ports. It also recycled a case from last year’s list, pointing to a $32 million verdict in Cameron County involving Vioxx. The case, however, was in Starr County, not Cameron County, and the award was reduced to $7.75 million in 2006.

“I think ATRA made a terrible mistake,” Summers said.

Brownsville Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Angela Burton noted that the impact of lawsuit abuse is often discussed in terms of the economy, the cost of health care and the price of consumer goods. But in her view the report lack credibility.

“I think that it is based on subjective evidence from news reports and various studies and does not provide a methodology used to reach the results,” said Burton, adding that she too noticed inaccurate information in the report.

ATRA’s Darren McKinney told said that “there was certainly no malice involved in the error” and that the report was written in “good faith.”