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I’m a plaintiff’s lawyer who believes in your right to a jury of your peers. The founders enshrined it in the Seventh Amendment, and Indiana’s constitution makes it plain: “In all civil cases, the right of trial by jury shall remain inviolate.”
That promise isn’t ornamental. It’s the public’s last check when corporate power overwhelms government.
Tort reform targets that check. Most recently, Indiana Republicans and the corporate tort reform lobby promoted House Bill 1417 as a fix for abusive lawsuits, but its purpose is to limit civil juries and protect corporations from accountability.
The argument for reform never changes, citing frivolous lawsuits and “nuclear verdicts.” But in 2024, out of 13,086 tort cases filed in Indiana, only 188 went to trial — just 85 before juries. That’s 0.01%.
A decade ago, 209 reached a jury, down from 486 in 2005.
The trend is unmistakable. So why push a narrative that doesn’t match reality? As Upton Sinclair warned, it’s “difficult to get a man” — or lobbyist — “to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
When juries do hear cases, they matter.
This year, Arizona and North Carolina juries held Uber liable for drivers sexually assaulting passengers. In California and New Mexico, Meta and YouTube were found negligent for creating addictive platforms targeting young users. These are just a few among thousands.
This is what tort reform advocates never admit: plaintiffs’ lawyers drive legal innovation.
Consider Big Tech and Section 230, the federal law shielding platforms from liability for user content. While Congress holds hearings filled with scripted outrage, plaintiffs’ lawyers are developing novel legal theories, forcing disclosure of internal documents and putting facts before citizens who must decide what conduct is reasonable.
That’s accountability. And it works.
Big Tech is facing its Big Tobacco moment. As with tobacco, lawsuits brought by individuals are achieving reforms legislatures have failed to deliver — exposing internal knowledge, reshaping legal standards, and creating public records governments can use.
These cases don’t end at a verdict. They become blueprints for state action. Major wins generate evidence attorneys general rely on when bringing enforcement actions for the public. Legislatures stall; courtrooms deal in proof.
Indiana’s history makes this clear. Public nuisance lawsuits — often brought by plaintiffs’ lawyers partnering with state and local governments — returned hundreds of millions from opioid manufacturers and secured long-term payments from the tobacco industry.
Those victories didn’t depend on regulators acting first; they depended on juries evaluating harm and corporate conduct.
HB 1417 would close that path. By redefining public nuisance to require an ongoing and unlawful condition affecting an established public right, it ignores how corporate harm occurs.
When tobacco executives denied nicotine’s addictiveness in 1994, no court had found their conduct unlawful. The same was true for opioid manufacturers despite thousands of Hoosier deaths. Under HB 1417, such lawsuits likely wouldn’t happen.
The bill also would limit remedies to injunctions. No damages, no funds for treatment or recovery. The dollars now supporting remediation programs across Indiana likely wouldn’t exist without public-nuisance suits.
Indiana doesn’t need more tort reform to fix a crisis that isn’t real. The error is easy to miss — it’s hard to notice the line you’ve already crossed.
More tort reform would simply make it harder for ordinary Hoosiers to seek justice and hold corporations accountable when no one else will.•
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Matthew J. Whitley until February was a local civil rights and mass torts attorney. Send comments to [email protected].
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