?Jackpot Justice? Needs Repair (Editorial)

Personal-injury lawyers say tort reform will put them out of business. State legislators argue it’s urgently needed as a recruitment tool because new businesses don’t want to locate in a “jackpot justice” state.

Our take is civil justice should be about justice.

Trial lawyers who have based their contingency-fee business plans on our current system have a vested interest in keeping things just as they are. When anyone suggests a change, they claim that any limits on what a jury can award is tantamount to burning the Bill of Rights.

Appealing to emotion is the plaintiff lawyers’ stock in trade. But the tort reformers are no better. They admit that tort reform probably won’t lower any doctor’s medical malpractice premiums, and they can’t point to a single company that has promised to relocate high-paying jobs to Arkansas if only we’ll enact tort reform. Their “Committee to Save Arkansas Jobs” ridiculously implies that anyone who disagrees with their position is actively seeking to cost the state jobs.

So let us set aside appeals to emotion and talk about justice: It simply isn’t fair that punitive damages can be levied that have no relationship to the actual damage done, even when there was no intent to harm. That $78.4 million verdict against a nursing home in Mena — of which $63 million was punitive — has become the punitive-damage cap poster child. The facts of the case in no way suggested that it was the most heinous incident in state history or that the nursing home intended to harm a 93-year-old Alzheimer’s patient. Yet a jury of ordinary Polk County citizens levied what was by far the largest award ever in Arkansas.

House Bill 1038, the civil justice reform bill being pushed by the CSAJ, would limit punitive damages to $250,000 or three times compensatory damages, whichever is less. Whether that strikes the proper balance is open to debate. We’re skittish of laws that include exact dollar amounts, since those things tend to become obsolete over time. But we do think a limit tied to actual damages is fair, and we agree there should be no cap when the plaintiff can prove that the defendant specifically intended to do wrong.

If making our justice system more just doesn’t lure in new industry, doesn’t lower insurance premiums and doesn’t solve all of Arkansas’ economic woes, we should be satisfied with doing right simply for the sake of doing right.