TORT REFORM

GOALS OF THE
TORT LAW SYSTEM
 GOALS
Goals of the Tort Law System
• Compensate victims for loss – i.e., restore victims to the
position they would have occupied had the tort not occurred
• Deter acting in socially irresponsible ways
• Spread the cost of injury among members of society
• Expose corruption, incompetence, and other forms of
misconduct
 GOALS
Questions Tort Reformers Consider
• Are these goals viable? That is, should they all be goals of the
tort law system?
• If so, is the tort law system as presently structured effectively
meeting these goals?
HISTORICAL ROOTS

CHANGING GOALS
and

A SWINGING PENDULUM
 HISTORICAL ROOTS
Before and Including World War I
• Before the end of World War I, the tort law system tended
to protect defendants at the expense of plaintiffs.

Ds
 HISTORICAL ROOTS
After World War I to 1960s: Progressive Reform
• After World War I, in an attempt to make the system fairer to
plaintiffs and to right society’s wrongs, legislatures and
courts developed progressive pro-plaintiff, no-fault
approaches to tort law.
Examples:
• Strict liability
• Workers’ compensation systems

Ps
View of tort law system:
• Tort law system = “Karmic
adjuster” that rights society’s
wrongs through a type of social
engineering
 HISTORICAL ROOTS
1960s - 1980s: Classical Reform
Perceived problems
• Late 1960s: Medical costs were rising sharply. Many people
blamed the increase on medical malpractice claims.
• Late 1970s: The premiums for manufacturers’ liability
insurance policies were rising.
• Late 1980s: Insurance companies were canceling or refusing
to renew insurance policies held by high-risk policyholders.
 HISTORICAL ROOTS
1960s-1980s: Classical Reform
Reforms
• To address the perceived problems, legislatures and courts
implemented “classical” tort reforms, which occurred in two
main waves.
• Wave 1 (1970s): State legislatures
enacted laws limiting the potential
malpractice liability of healthcare

Ds
providers.
 HISTORICAL ROOTS
1960s-1980s: Classical Reform
Reforms: (continued)
• Wave 2: State legislatures enacted laws that . . .
• Eliminated or restricted joint and several liability;
• Capped a plaintiff’s recovery of non-
economic damages (e.g., pain and
suffering, mental anguish) in certain
types of cases;

Ds
• Reestablished sovereign immunity;
• Permitted defendants to pay out
damages awards on a periodic basis;
• Penalized plaintiffs who filed frivolous
lawsuits; and
• Mandated alternative dispute resolution.
 HISTORICAL ROOTS
1960s-1980s: Classical Reform
View of tort system
• Tort law system = means of
deterring potential tortfeasors
from engaging in risky behavior

Ds
TORT REFORM TODAY:
FOUR CONCERNS

Plaintiff-orientation of the law

Litigiousness
Runaway verdicts
Inhibition of medical practice and business
 FOUR CONCERNS
Plaintiff-orientation of the Law
• No-fault liability (strict liability) in product liability cases
• Purpose: to shift the cost of injuries caused by dangerous products
to the manufacturers, who are arguably better able to absorb them
than the individuals who are injured
• Criticism: escalation of claims against manufacturers
• Relaxation of causation requirements
• Example: market-share liability theory, recognized in some states
• Replacement of common-law contributory negligence with
statutory comparative negligence/proportionate responsibility
schemes
 FOUR CONCERNS
Plaintiff-orientation of the Law
• Abolition of the privity requirement in product liability cases
• Privity is any close legal relationship, but the term is especially
common in contract law to refer to the relationship between parties
to a contract. “Privity of contract” would exist between the seller or
manufacturer of a product and the direct purchaser of that product.
• Criticism: opening up universe of potential defendants
 FOUR CONCERNS
Litigiousness
• Reformers’ argument: civil lawsuit filings are increasing,
thereby indicating that Americans are becoming increasingly
litigious.
• State courts: in 2007, the number of new state-court civil filings
increased 4.6% over that in 2006.
• Federal courts: between 2005-2009, civil case filings increased by
9%.
 FOUR CONCERNS
Litigiousness
• Counterarguments and questions
• Is the increase in civil filings due not to the plaintiff-orientation of
the law, but instead to:
• The increase in population?
• The increased resistance of defendants to settle without litigation?
• The increase in the number of transactions between parties?
• Are Americans more litigious than people in other countries, per
capita?
• Are Americans more litigious now than they were 100 years ago,
per capita?
 FOUR CONCERNS
Runaway Verdicts
• Reformers’ argument: jury awards in personal injury cases are
increasing in size.
• Commonly cited source: statistics compiled by Jury Verdict
Research (JVR), which maintains a nationwide database of
verdicts and settlements for personal injury claims from every state
Counterarguments and questions
• JVR’s statistics are arguably unreliable because JVR does not:
• Conduct systematic and representative samplings;
• Include defense verdicts or take-nothing verdicts in its statistics; or
• Conduct original research on verdicts, but instead relies on reporting by
lawyers, on word of mouth, and on media reports.
 FOUR CONCERNS
Runaway Verdicts
Counterarguments and questions (continued)
• Statistics suggest that juries are actually cautious about awarding
plaintiffs substantial awards. Examples:
• Plaintiffs prevail in fewer than half the cases heard by juries.
• The average jury award is generally less than the actual losses suffered
by the plaintiff.
• When juries do make large awards, it is usually in business litigation, not
in individual tort cases.
• More than 90% of tort actions settle out of court, and on average tort
claims settle for 74% of the plaintiffs’ potential recovery. These statistics
suggest that plaintiffs understand they might not receive their full
damages from a jury.
 FOUR CONCERNS
Runaway Verdicts
• Interpreting the statistics
• Reformers’ arguments:
• JVR does not poll jurors; therefore, it does not know jurors’ rationales.
• Statistics cited by opponents of reform may simply reflect a random
fluctuation instead of a statistical trend.
• Statistical trends are unimportant anyway; rather, the primary indicia of a
dysfunctional system are individual excessive awards.
Counterarguments: the increase in the size of damages awards
may instead be due to . . .
• Improvements in medical technology: if plaintiffs live longer and receive
more treatment, jury awards for future damages would be expected to
reflect those increases in longevity; and/or
• The increase in the number of cases being referred to attorneys, who
have a higher quality pool of cases to choose from and actually file.
 FOUR CONCERNS
Runaway Verdicts
• Interpreting the statistics (continued)
• Reformers’ argument: all of society bears the brunt of increased
jury awards (“we all pay”).
Counterargument: given the cost-spreading goal of tort system, we
should accept increased costs as part of social price of security.
Question: should we reexamine the wisdom of having the cost-
spreading goal at all?
 FOUR CONCERNS
Inhibition of Medical and Business Communities
• Reformers’ arguments: increased tort liability has . . .
• Created the practice of defensive medicine (a conservative
practice of medicine aimed at avoiding potential lawsuits rather
than furthering the patient’s needs), thereby increasing prices,
encouraging unnecessary tests, and making doctors reluctant to
perform high-risk procedures; and
• Obstructed product development and hampered business.
 FOUR CONCERNS
Inhibition of Medical and Business Communities
Counterarguments regarding medical practice
• Claims against doctors/hospitals dropped an average of 1.9% per
year since the large increases in 1980s (although some attribute
the drop to the high procedural costs of filing a malpractice claim).
• Some studies have concluded that fear of malpractice claims has
not increased the practice of defensive medicine.
• The medical/business crisis is due not to frivolous litigation, but to
the many wrongs that are going unredressed.
• Example: per one study, 8 times as many patients in New York State are
injured from medical negligence as there are malpractice claims. Only
about 50% receive compensation.
• Plaintiffs prevail in smaller fraction of malpractice cases that go to
trial than in any other category of litigation.
 FOUR CONCERNS
Inhibition of Medical and Business Communities
Counterarguments regarding business and industry
• As a result of tort litigation, products are safer, manufacturing
procedures are improved, and product instructions are more
explicit.
• Liability costs for corporations decreased 37% from 1992 to 1997.
• Jurors tend to be:
• Generally favorable toward business;
• More skeptical about profit motives of individual plaintiffs than of
business defendants; and
• Committed to holding down awards.
 FOUR CONCERNS
Inhibition of Medical and Business Communities
• Judicious use of statistics: example
• Per JVR, the average verdict in a products liability case is $1
million.
• Problems with this average, per textbook’s author:
• It was computed only on the basis of verdicts favoring plaintiffs, yet less
than half of product liability cases tried by a jury result in a verdict
favorable to a plaintiff.
• It is based on a very small sample of product liability verdicts.
• It includes only “significant” or “important” verdicts, not typical verdicts.
TORT REFORM TODAY:
IMPLEMENTATIONS

Damage award caps

Modification of joint and several liability
Discouragement of frivolous lawsuits
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Damage Award Caps
Compensatory damages
• Most states have passed some type of legislation regulating
damage awards, depending on the type of damages at issue.
• Texas limits recovery of non-economic damages in medical
malpractice cases, generally to $250,000. [Texas Civil Practice
and Remedies Code §§ 74.301-.303]
• However, legislation restricting recovery of economic and non-
economic damages has been successfully challenged as
unconstitutional in some other states.
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Damage Award Caps
Texas’s settlement statute and rule
• Background
• In a civil lawsuit, either party may initiate settlement negotiations
with the opponent to attempt resolve the dispute by mutual
agreement without having to go to trial.
• Settlement demand = a plaintiff’s request that the defendant pay a
specified sum in exchange for the plaintiff’s promise to dismiss the
lawsuit against the defendant (or, if no lawsuit has yet been filed,
plaintiff’s promise not to sue the defendant) and release the causes of
action at issue
• Settlement offer = a defendant’s offer to pay the plaintiff a specified
sum in exchange for the plaintiff’s promise to dismiss the lawsuit (or, if
no lawsuit has yet been filed, plaintiff’s promise not to sue the
defendant) and release the causes of action at issue
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Damage Award Caps
Texas’s settlement statute and rule
• Background
• A party’s acceptance of a settlement offer or demand creates a
settlement agreement, which is an enforceable contract.
• If settlement occurs before trial:
• The parties immediately notify the court of the settlement;
• The court clerk or administrator removes the case from the court’s trial
docket, which is now clear for the court to hear other cases; and
• The parties avoid the time, expense, and uncertainty of a trial.
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Damage Award Caps
Texas’s settlement statute and rule (continued)
• Background (continued)
• A party’s rejection of a settlement offer or demand before trial
means that the case must proceed to trial and that the parties must
incur the time, expense, and uncertainty of that trial.
• To encourage settlement and reduce the number of unnecessary
trials, Texas has promulgated two complementary laws under
which a litigant who rejects a pretrial settlement offer or demand
and thereby forces the case to trial can, under certain
circumstances, be penalized if the ultimate judgment is significantly
less favorable to that party than the proposed settlement amount.
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Damage Award Caps
Texas’s settlement statute and rule (continued)
• Background (continued)
• These complementary laws consist of a statute and a rule of civil
procedure, which must be read together.
• Settlement statute: Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code Chapter
42, in which the Texas Legislature set forth the basic mechanics of the
law and authorized the Texas Supreme Court to supply additional details
• Settlement rule: Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 167, in which the Texas
Supreme Court supplied the additional details
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Damage Award Caps
Texas’s settlement statute and rule
• Procedure

PROCEDURE UNDER TEXAS’S SETTLEMENT STATUTE AND RULE

CPRC CHAPTER 42; TRCP 167
No later than 45 days before the trial date, the litigant intending to invoke the statute
1
and rule must file with the court a written declaration invoking them.
The litigant must serve a written document on the opponent in which the litigant:
• States that the litigant is making the offer or demand under CPRC Chapter 42 and
2 TRCP 167;
• States the terms of the offer or demand; and
• States a deadline for acceptance not sooner than 14 days.
Rejection of the offer or demand occurs if the opponent either:
3 • Expressly rejects it by the stated deadline; or
• Fails to accept it by the stated deadline.
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Damage Award Caps
Texas’s settlement statute and rule
• Procedure (continued)

If rejection occurs and the case goes to trial, and if the ultimate judgment is
“significantly less favorable” to the opponent than the settlement offer or demand,
the litigant who invoked the settlement statute/rule is entitled to recover his or her
litigation costs incurred after the rejection.
4 • If the rejecting party is the plaintiff, the ultimate judgment is “significantly less
favorable” when its amount is less than 80% of the amount of the rejected offer.
• If the rejecting party is the defendant: the ultimate judgment is “significantly less
favorable” when its amount is more than 120% of the amount of the rejected
demand.
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Damage Award Caps
Texas’s settlement statute and rule
• Procedure (continued)

If the ultimate judgment is “significantly less favorable” than the rejected settlement
offer or demand . . .
• And the rejecting party is the defendant, the court will add the plaintiff’s litigation
costs in the judgment against the defendant.
• And the rejecting party is the plaintiff, the court will offset the amount of the
defendant’s litigation costs against the amount of the defendant’s liability to the
5 plaintiff.
The amount of these litigation costs cannot exceed the amount of the plaintiff’s
original recovery before the addition or offset of those costs. In other words:
• If the rejecting party is the plaintiff, offsetting the defendant’s litigation costs
cannot reduce the plaintiff’s original recovery to a negative amount; and
• If the rejecting party is the defendant, adding the plaintiff’s litigation costs cannot
more than double the plaintiff’s original recovery.
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Damage Award Caps
Exemplary (punitive) damages
• Purposes:
• To punish the defendant for especially egregious wrongdoing
• To deter others from engaging in similar behavior
• Common criticisms of exemplary (punitive) damages:
• They inhibit product development because manufacturers will fail to
develop new and useful products for fear of potential litigation.
• They lead to excessive litigation by plaintiffs, who hope to receive
settlements from defendants wishing to avoid the expense and risk
of litigation.
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Damage Award Caps
Exemplary (punitive) damages (continued)
• Common criticisms: (continued)
• They unfairly benefit plaintiffs with windfalls intended to punish
tortfeasors and thus encourage litigious behavior.
• They hamper medical practice and business by increasing the cost
of insurance. More specifically;
• In medical practice, exemplary damages:
• Victimize doctors, who serve socially useful functions.
• Inhibit doctors as a group from taking potentially helpful risks.
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Damage Award Caps
Exemplary (punitive) damages (continued)
• Common criticisms: (continued)
• They hamper medical practice and business (continued)
• In products liability cases, exemplary damages:
• If awarded against corporations, punish the corporation’s
shareholders, not the actual wrongdoers;
• Do not serve the associated goals of punishment and deterrence;
• Are not necessary to achieve optimal product safety;
• Are incompatible with fault-free theories of strict liability and breach of
warranty;
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Damage Award Caps
Exemplary (punitive) damages (continued)
• Common criticisms: (continued)
• They hamper medical practice and business (continued)
• In products liability cases, exemplary damages: (continued)
• Cause over-punishment, adverse social/economic consequences;
and
• Cause cases to be overvalued because punitive damages are a wild
card in the sense that they make it difficult for corporations to predict
their exposure.
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Damage Award Caps
Exemplary (punitive) damages (continued)
• Counterarguments, according to some studies:
• The frequency and magnitude of exemplary damages awards have
changed little from 1962 to 1987.
• Exemplary damages award were neither excessive nor frequent
over five states from 1985 to 1987.
• In some of the nation’s largest counties, exemplary damages are
awarded in only 3.3% of all cases, and judges are more likely than
juries to award them.
• Note: in Texas, only juries may award exemplary damages.
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Damage Award Caps
Exemplary (punitive) damages (continued)
• Counterarguments: (continued)
• Exemplary damages are awarded more frequently in intentional tort
cases and in business and contract disputes than in personal injury
litigation.
• Roughly half of all exemplary damages awards are reversed or
reduced post-verdict.
• Southern states account for more than 50%, and Western states
for about 20%, of all non-asbestos exemplary damages awards.
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Damage Award Caps
Exemplary (punitive) damages (continued)
• Counterarguments: (continued)
• From 1965-1990, Texas led the nation in exemplary damages
awards, whereas six states awarded no punitive damages in any
personal injury or product liability case.
• Exemplary damage awards peaked in most states between 1981
and 1985.
• Five states account for almost half of all exemplary damages
awarded in medical malpractice cases, whereas 11 states did not
have a single exemplary damages award in a medical malpractice
case from 1963 to 1993.
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Damage Award Caps
Exemplary (punitive) damages (continued)
• McDonald’s “hot coffee” case
• Facts
• 79-year-old Stella Liebeck, while sitting in the front passenger seat of
her grandson’s car, purchased a cup of coffee from a McDonald’s drive-
through window.
• She secured the cup between her legs and removed the cap to put
sugar and cream in the coffee. The cup tipped over and spilled hot
coffee on her inner thigh and genital and groin area, resulting in third-
degree burns.
• She was in the hospital for eight days, required skin grafting, was
disabled for two years, had scarring, and incurred $20,000 in medical
bills, which McDonald’s declined to pay.
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Damage Award Caps
Exemplary (punitive) damages (continued)
• McDonald’s “hot coffee” case (continued)
• Evidence at trial
• McDonald’s Corporation mandated that its coffee have a temperature of
180 to 190º Fahrenheit – hot enough to cause third-degree burns in two
to seven seconds.
• From 1982 to 1992, McDonald’s had over 700 claims and lawsuits
regarding the temperature of its coffee.
• According to its quality control manager, McDonald’s required its coffee
to be maintained at around 185 degrees and did not intend to reduce
the temperature.
• According to its human-factors engineer, the issue of hot coffee burns
was statistically insignificant when compared to the billions of cups of
coffee McDonald’s sells each year.
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Damage Award Caps
Exemplary (punitive) damages (continued)
• McDonald’s “hot coffee” case (continued)
• Jury award:
• $200,000 in compensatory damages, which was reduced by her own
20% of responsibility
• $2.7 million in exemplary damages, which the trial court judge reduced
to $480,000
• Appeal: the parties settled for an undisclosed lesser amount before
the appellate court ruled on the case.
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Damage Award Caps
Exemplary (punitive) damages (continued)
• Examples of reforms
• Statutory caps. Some states (including Texas) have enacted
statutory caps on exemplary damages awards.
• The Texas Damages Act, CPRC § 41.008, caps exemplary damages
awards in most cases at the greater of the following:

Sum of:

(2 x amount of economic damages found by jury)

+
(amount of any noneconomic damages found by jury up to $750,000)

or
$200,000
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Damage Award Caps
Exemplary (punitive) damages (continued)
• Examples of reforms (continued)
• Affirmative defenses. For example, in North Dakota, an award of
exemplary damages against a manufacturer in a products liability
case is improper if the product complied with federal or
administrative regulations or was certified by a federal agency.
• Tenders to state. In some states (not Texas), exemplary damages
are tendered in whole or part to the state instead of to the plaintiff.
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Damage Award Caps
Exemplary (punitive) damages (continued)
• Examples of reforms (continued)
• Bifurcated trials
• In some states (including Texas), courts may conduct bifurcated trials
(two-phase trials) to avoid the prejudice that punitive-related evidence –
such as evidence of the defendants’ net worth – may have against the
defendants during the liability (e.g., negligence) phase of the trial.
• The phrases of a bifurcated trial are the following:
• Phase 1: liability phase (determination of whether the defendant committed
the underlying tort)
• Phase 2: exemplary damages phase (determination of whether exemplary
damages should be awarded and, if so, in what amount)
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Modification of Joint and Several Liability
Introduction
• Joint and several liability = in a multiple-tortfeasor case
involving a single, indivisible harm, the liability of any one, any
selected group, or all of the tortfeasors for the full amount of
that harm, depending on the plaintiff’s election
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Modification of Joint and Several Liability
Historical assessment
• Progressive era reformers approved of joint and several liability
because, in their view, it:
• Distributes losses among defendants instead of plaintiffs; and
• Provides plaintiffs with full compensation for their injuries.
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Modification of Joint and Several Liability
Historical assessment (continued)
• Classical era reformers opposed joint and several liability
(which they called the “deep-pocket” theory) because, in their
view:
• Joint and several liability unfairly allows plaintiffs to go after
defendants with maximum financial resources even if those
defendants have minimal culpability.
• Plaintiffs should bear the risk of insolvent defendants in multiple-
defendant actions just as they bear the risk of an insolvent
defendant in a single-defendant action.
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Modification of Joint and Several Liability
Historical assessment (continued)
• Classical era reformers: (continued)
• Joint and several liability increased insurance costs because it
precluded insurance companies from being able to accurately
predict potential liability.
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Modification of Joint and Several Liability
Other criticisms
• Because of the various statutory comparative negligence
schemes (“proportionate responsibility” in Texas) in force in
many states, joint and several liability is no longer necessary.
• Joint and several liability increases taxes and reduces services
for municipalities because municipalities, as “deep pockets,”
are held liable even when their comparative fault is relatively
low.
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Modification of Joint and Several Liability
Examples of reforms
• At least 35 states have either abolished or modified their joint
and several liability doctrines. For example, some states have
restricted the application of joint and several liability to:
• Certain types of torts (such as torts involving hazardous wastes)
• Texas takes the approach by imposing joint and several liability on all
joint tortfeasors – that is, persons who, acting in concert with each other,
tortiously cause the plaintiff a single, indivisible harm.
• Certain types of damages (such as economic damages but not
noneconomic damages)
• Cases in which the plaintiff is fault-free
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Modification of Joint and Several Liability
Examples of reforms (continued)
• For example, some states have restricted the application of
joint and several liability to: (continued)
• Cases in which a defendant is found to have a percentage of fault
of at least a specified amount (Texas’s approach)
• Texas takes this approach regarding concurrent tortfeasors – that is,
persons who, acting independently of each other, tortiously cause the
plaintiff a single, indivisible harm. A concurrent tortfeasor has joint and
several liability only if his or her percentage of responsibility is 51% or
more.
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Modification of Joint and Several Liability
Impact of abolishing the doctrine
• According to the textbook’s author:
• Empirical research has shown an increase in litigation in states that
have abolished joint and several liability.
• Possible reasons for the increase:
• The abolition reduced incentives for defendants to promote safety
because they were exposed to a lesser risk of payment.
• As a result of the abolition, plaintiffs must bring a separate action
against each tortfeasor to collect the value of all harm suffered.
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Discouragement of Frivolous Lawsuits
• Court-imposed sanctions
• In federal courts:
• Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 allows U.S. District Courts to
sanction parties and/or their attorneys who file frivolous lawsuits.
Sanctions can include reimbursing the opposing party for its litigation
costs, including attorney fees.
• U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court have their
own procedural rules permitting sanctions for frivolous appeals.
• In Texas courts:
• Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 13 is the Texas counterpart to the federal
rule.
• The Texas Rules of Appellate Procedure allow Texas appellate courts to
sanction parties who file frivolous appeals.
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Discouragement of Frivolous Lawsuits
• “Loser pays” laws
• American rule = under American common law, the losing party in
a civil lawsuit is not required to compensate the winning party for
attorney fees incurred in the litigation unless a statute specifically
authorizes that recovery.
• Statutory attorney fees = attorney fees that a statute authorizes the
winning party to recover
• British rule (a/k/a “loser pays” law) = under British law, the losing
party is required to compensate the winning party for at least some
of the attorney fees incurred in the litigation.
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Discouragement of Frivolous Lawsuits
• “Loser pays” laws (continued)
• Some argue that the U.S. should adopt the British rule to deter
plaintiffs from filing frivolous lawsuits. However, the British rule may
actually increase the administrative costs of the judicial system.
Reasons:
• Under the American rule, a key incentive for parties to settle their
disputes before trial is to avoid incurring the attorney fees that preparing
for and participating in a trial would require.
• Under the British rule, this incentive disappears for parties who are
confident of winning their cases since the fees would be recoverable if
they win.
 IMPLEMENTATIONS
Other Implementations
• Modification of the collateral-source rule
• Statutes of repose
• Rules of discovery requiring disclosure of facts and evidence
relevant to the parties’ claims and defenses
• Court-ordered alternative dispute resolution (ADR)
• Immunity of employers to suits by injured employees under
workers’ compensation laws
• Mandatory automobile liability insurance
• Structured settlements
• Restrictions on statutory waivers of sovereign immunity
• Limitations on recovery of statutory attorney fees