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Indiana doesn’t need more limits on liability lawsuits. What it needs is more honesty about why those limits are being proposed.
I’ve been a trial lawyer since 1993, and as this year’s president of the Indiana Trial Lawyers Association, my experience — backed by publicly available data — tells a story rarely heard in the Statehouse hallways.
Civil tort case filings have not increased sharply, but the number of civil jury trials has dropped sharply. This data confirms what I have seen firsthand: our courts are not out of control.
In addition, the Indiana Jury Verdict Reporter tracked 5,400-plus verdicts over the last 25 years. This data shows that plaintiffs win barely one third of the time in medical malpractice cases and even less in products liability and premises liability cases.
This data also shows the verdicts that make the headlines represent only a handful of cases and not a broken system in need of repair.
The Indiana Trial Lawyers Association supports every Hoosier’s constitutional right to open courts and equal protection under the law.
In my experience, the judicial system works. Frivolous suits fade quickly. Judges dismiss claims without factual merit before undertaking costly, time-consuming trials. And excessive verdicts are often reduced — or reversed — on appeal.
When verdicts make the news, they are outliers, not the norm. But each headline verdict represents what a jury believed a person deserved after a catastrophic, life-altering injury. None of us would trade places with that plaintiff.
These verdicts are justice in action, delivered by common-sense jurors weighing the facts as presented by both sides. And rarely do the headline verdicts get paid in full. Liability insurance limits are often exhausted long before a judgment is paid.
During this year’s state legislative session, lobbyists told lawmakers that more limits on liability lawsuits are necessary to attract business investment in Indiana.
Do we want to encourage investment from out-of-state companies by offering them less accountability when they harm one of our citizens?
A strong economy is built on safety, responsibility and quality — not by limiting the liability of negligent actors.
If lawmakers want to strengthen Indiana’s justice system, the answer is evidence-based court reform, not tort reform. That starts with investing in the judiciary.
We need more judges, more lawyers, better resources and modern technology to cut backlogs and expand access.
Any reform should be guided by data and judicial experience, not by lobbyists seeking to protect their clients from accountability. That is the conversation Hoosiers deserve.
Indiana does not need more limits on liability lawsuits.
Every limit placed on a liability lawsuit is a limit placed on a citizen — a real Hoosier who was harmed and is seeking the only accountability our system constitutionally guarantees.
Before we take those rights away, we should be able to point to a real problem that needs fixing.•
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Robert W. Johnson is president of the Indiana Trial Lawyers Association. Send comments to [email protected].
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