At the legislature today, Senators reconsider a vote that killed one of the Republican majority’s legal reform bills. That bill now makes its way to the House and a special report on the state of water infrastructure in southern West Virginia on The Legislature Today.
Tag: Tort Reform
Education and Workers' Comp Debated on the House Floor
Coal mine safety was on the minds of Democrats in the house Tuesday; that issue was House Bill 2011, dealing with deliberate intent. The measure doesn’t address mine safety standards, but those opposed to the bill said it will hurt miners.
Emotions were high on the floor as House Bills 2005 and 2011 were discussed for passage.
House Bill 2005 relates to alternative programs for the education of teachers.
Delegate Amanda Pasdon, the House Education Chair, stood to explain the bill.
“We know that there’s many counties around the state that do not have a qualified pool of applicants,” Pasdon said, “There are classrooms without teachers, there are about 300 classrooms that do not have a highly qualified educator in them right now, which means they have someone filling a role, but they are not highly qualified. What this bill does is try to expand that pool of options for our counties. This is not a mandate from Charleston; this is a tool in the toolbox for our counties to give them the opportunity to look outside of our normal, traditional methods and hire in instances that they could find someone in their community that could fit their need.”
Many Democrats stood to oppose the bill saying it was cheapening the process many teachers have to go through to acquire their degrees.
Delegate Nancy Guthrie stood to oppose the bill saying the focus should be raising the wage for teachers.
“I was hoping that we would be able to count on all of us rallying together to fight against cuts for children and families as we did last year, to fight against cuts for higher education, as we all believe we should do, and yet what we’re doing in a tight budget year is something that every teacher that I’ve received letters from has said please don’t do,” Guthrie said, “I think it undermines the credibility when what we really ought to be doing is knuckling down and trying to prioritize our budget, so that we give teachers the pay raise that they need so that we can reduce the shortages that we’ve got.”
Delegate Pasdon stood again to support the bill in her closing remarks.
“We have over 700 teaching vacancies, as you’ve heard many times, through many references and speeches on this floor today, that number is from the Department of Education’s 2014 report,” Pasdon said, “We have over 300 teachers teaching outside of their field of study. This isn’t anything against teachers, for those teacher that have stood with us and worked hard to get their certification and their education, thank you, because we don’t pay you enough, and we don’t appreciate you enough. This isn’t against teachers, this is, as the gentleman from the 7th put it, about 280,000 little lives that are depending on us to do the right thing for them. It is our responsibility to make sure that we put the most effective educator in front of them to give them the best foundation that they could possibly have to take on the role of their dreams of the 21st Century.”
House Bill 2005 passed 60 to 35.
The next bill that caused a lot of debate on the floor was House Bill 2011, another priority tort reform bill. It’s called the deliberate intent bill…meaning an injured employee must provide proof that an employer deliberately intended to do something to cause the injury.
Delegate Shawn Fluharty opposed the bill.
“This is a public relations ploy, that’s what this is,” Fluharty said, “and you want to call it tort reform, but I think that’s a wrong assertion to make, it’s really safety reform, because what it’s doing is creating an environment that is created the likes of Sego, creating the environment of protectionism, making it impossible to bring a claim; protectionism of the likes of Don Blankenship, who currently is facing criminal indictment. We should just call this thing the Don Blankenship Protection Act, if you really want to get down to it.”
Numerous Democrats stood to oppose the bill calling the bill grotesque and impossible for employees to be protected. Delegate Barbara Fleischauer stood and said she had 29 reasons to oppose the bill and read the names of the 29 miners who died in the Upper Big Branch mine disaster in 2010.
By the end of the debate, Delegate John Shott, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said Democrats are mischaracterizing the bill. He went on to point out that the disasters at Sago in 2006 and the Upper Big Branch disaster, had they happened today, those miners would be protected under the bill because of the immense about of evidence of violations.
Shott then held up an advertisement to further his point.
“This is an advertisement online from a local lawyer, and here’s what he says, if you are injured on the job under certain circumstances, you may be eligible for a deliberate intent and workplace injury case, which is unique to the state of West Virginia, which is unique to the state of West Virginia. Well ladies and gentlemen, we can remain unique and continue to kiss our kids goodbye, our grandkids goodbye, or we can get in line with the rest of the country, compete with our neighbors, and have a reasonable deliberate intent statue. We are not abandoning the idea that there are situations in which employers do extreme things that will injure our employees, that is preserved in here, but we do need predictability, we need certainty and we need to be in the mainstream of this country,” Shott said.
House Bill 2011 passed 59 to 38. It now heads to the senate for consideration.
Senate Clears Bill for Tort Reform
The Republican-led state Senate has cleared a bill to change legal protections when multiple parties are at fault in a lawsuit.
Senators voted 24-9 Monday to change comparative fault provisions, with several Democrats in favor.
Currently, if a party can’t pay its share of damages and another party was deemed more than 30 percent responsible, the second entity may be required to cover all remaining damages.
The Senate bill would still require other entities to pay for some damages the insolvent party can’t cover. The amount would depend on how much the entity was deemed at fault.
The bill differs from one passed by the House of Delegates.
The House bill would require parties to pay only the percentage they are deemed at fault by a jury, in most cases.
Tort Reform is Discussed on the House Floor
When a vehicle accident occurs, who is at fault? And how much should those at fault pay in damages? These are questions the House of Delegates grappled with Tuesday as they discussed abolishing joint liability and implementing comparative fault.
House Bill 2002 seeks to do away with joint liability in our state and instead introduce comparative fault. What this means is currently, before the bill, if someone is involved in an accident, and are responsible for 30% of the fault, but the other person responsible for 70% of the fault can’t pay their share, the person receiving 30% of the fault would take in all the fault.
House Bill 2002 would change this and only require the person who is 30% at fault pay 30% of their share.
The bill, while many in the House supported what it was trying to convey, many Democrats stood to offer amendments to the bill. Ranging from suggestions to offer exceptions to people who are intentionally harmed by someone to protecting children fourteen and under from taking any blame, to an economic impact statement, all of the Democrats amendments were rejected.
Republicans felt all of the additions would just muddy up the focus of the bill; to protect everyone.
During the fall election campaign, Republican candidates were clear that the state needs tort reform. Tuesday in the House, they got their chance. Delegate John Shott, chairman of the House Judiciary committee explained the party’s position.
“So one thing the leadership, or the basic thrust of leadership on both the House and the Senate side is try to identify those features of our state that are making, or creating a perception that this is not a good place to have a business, to grow jobs, to move to have a career or a profession,” said Shott, “And the legal system is one of those areas that’s been examined, and there are features of the legal system that contribute to that perception, and there’s no one that stands out, but among those features the concept of joint and several liability is one that is seen as unfair, because it creates an uncertainty among the business people, among the community, and among individuals as to the fact that you may end up having to pay more than the share of fault that you bear in an accident.”
But Delegate Tim Miley, once the House Speaker now Minority Leader, resented Shott’s assertion that the state is not business friendly.
“You know we hear a lot about the business climate of the state, perhaps someone should have shared that with the cracker plant coming, someone should have shared that with Antero that moved its corporate headquarters to north-central West Virginia, someone should have shared that with Mark West Energy who has built processing plants in north-central West Virginia and spent billions of dollars doing so. Someone should have shared that with, I think it’s Southwest Energy, a company who’s taken over the assets of Chesapeake Energy and we’re going to have a bill that benefits them up in the Energy Committee today,” said Miley, “I stand up on the floor every Thursday, and will continue to do so to talk about the jobs available in this state. Someone should have told all those business employers who have jobs available how bad it is to do business in this state. So it gets a little old justifying every effort to take rights away from consumers with the mantra, we need to make our state business friendly, when the unfriendly nature that’s been described from West Virginia has been done by these shady outside groups with no objective data to review.”
For years, West Virginia has been labeled a judicial hell hole by the American Tort Reform Association. This group accuses the state’s legal system of being out of balance. It’s a campaign the West Virginia Association for Justice, representing the state’s trial lawyers, has criticized. Shott maintains this Legislation and says its necessary to polish the state’s legal image.
“To the gentlemen from the 48th, I am exceptionally pleased that things are going well in north-central West Virginia,” said Shott, “I wish they were going as well in southern West Virginia. What we’re really looking at folks is a change in an approach, an approach that’s been underway for 83 years or so that the results, I think, speak for themselves. Our children are leaving the state, our grandchildren are leaving the state, except in north-central West Virginia where a spark, has of, discovery of the Marcellus shale, has caused a, I’ll call it a mini-boom, and our, certainly, as West Virginians are all pleased about that. But unfortunately, that’s not what we see all over our state. I sometimes ask myself, why would businesses come to West Virginia, and I think the problem now is that they won’t come unless there’s something they have to take from us that’s already here, like the Marcellus shale. If a business can go anywhere, it’s not going to come to West Virginia. It’s just not deemed a friendly place to do business.”
The bill passed 74 to 25, with some of the Democrats voting for it. House Bill 2002 now goes to the Senate for consideration.
Tort Reform, Budget Showdown Among Top Issues for W.Va. GOP
Republicans will lead the West Virginia Legislature's lawmaking session for the first time since the 1930s.The 60-day legislative session starts…
Republicans will lead the West Virginia Legislature’s lawmaking session for the first time since the 1930s.
The 60-day legislative session starts Wednesday.
A national GOP wave this election also ended more than eight decades of Democratic rule in Charleston. Republicans will have a 64-36 edge in the House of Delegates and an 18-16 Senate majority.
Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin can veto bills, but Republicans only need a simple majority to overturn Tomblin’s vetoes. There’s a tougher threshold to overturn budget vetoes.
Republicans are looking at tort reform, deleting a business tax, repealing state renewable energy standards and potentially scaling back a law dealing with chemical spill protections.
Tomblin and Republicans also don’t agree how to fill a $195 million budget shortfall.