The Truth About Torts

The Campaign for 'Tort Reform':  Undercutting Vital Protections

In recent years, efforts to rein in excesses of corporations have run head-long into an assault on individuals' right to bring suit against manufacturers whose products or activities cause them harm.  This push for what its backers call “tort reform,” has been driven by a seemingly endless stream of thinly fact-checked anecdotes about frivolous lawsuits and by a brazen effort to blame the rising costs of health care on malpractice lawsuits. 
 
CPR’s Member Scholars have conducted extensive research on the topic, and in a series of reports on various aspects of the subject, have debunked most of industry’s claims about the need for tort reform. Indeed, the push for tort reform is at its core an effort to protect industry from its own excesses. By limiting the dollar damages citizens can seek in court, industry hopes to make unsafe and polluting practices less financially risky. And by denying citizens access to the courts, industry hopes to make such practices all but free of risk. 
Nevertheless, the myth of the "Lawsuit Crisis" has taken root, the result of years of pounding by corporate interests intent on enacting "tort reform" that protects them from the harm their products and practices cause.
 
In recent years, the effort to protect industry from accountability in court has taken a new turn, as various industries have lined up before state legislatures and Congress seeking legislation granting broad immunity from litigation resulting from their tortious behavior. In 2012, for example, the federal “Domestic Fuels Act” (DFA) sought to grant immunity to purveyors of ethanol and other fuel additives. Such bills are the next wave of the attack on corporate accountability. CPR Member Scholars Thomas O. McGarity and Sidney Shapiro, with CPR Policy Analyst Nicholas Vidargas, explored the phenomenon in their March 2013 white paper, Sweeping Corporate Immunity for the Fuel Industry: The Next Front in the "Corporate Accountability" Wars (CPR White Paper 1303).
 
Among other things, CPR Member Scholars’ work in this area includes multiple installments in the Truth About Torts series: