Reaching Compromise
“The good of the people is the greatest law.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman statesman, orator, lawyer and philosopher.
Friday, March 1, was the last day legislation could be introduced in the Missouri Senate. Consequently, we saw a flurry of new bills filed on Wednesday and Thursday. There have now been more than 570 Senate bills and resolutions introduced this session. Work on those measures will continue through the middle of May. This week’s Senate action ranged from labor issues to property taxes to tort reform.
One bill impacting my Senate district is Senate Bill 72, which addresses how wind farms are assessed for property tax purposes. The current assessment method differs depending on whether a wind farm is locally owned or the property of a public utility. Property taxes from a locally-owned wind energy project stay in the county where the facility is located. Property taxes from wind farms owned by public utilities go to the state, and the local community receives a much smaller benefit. If SB 72 advances to the governor’s desk, all wind energy farms will be assessed locally, and the tax proceeds from those facilities will remain in the impacted county.
One notable thing that happened in the Missouri Senate this week was a 14-hour filibuster of Senate Bill 7 which addresses an area of civil law known as “joinder and venue.” Simply put, this legislation clarifies what parties are entitled to join into a common lawsuit in Missouri courts and where the case should be heard.
Logic would suggest that a lawsuit should be brought in one of three places: 1) where the plaintiff lives, 2) where the defendant is based, or 3) where the event or act that prompted the suit took place. Surprisingly, that is often not the case, especially in suits involving “torts,” the legal term for injuries and losses.
Missouri has become America’s courtroom, as our courts – and especially those in the city of St. Louis – have attracted an extraordinary number of lawsuits. Many of these cases have little to nothing to do with Missouri or its residents. Often, they involve multiple out-of-state plaintiffs, with separate injury claims, that join together in a single lawsuit. This barrage of out-of-state cases ties up Missouri courts and places burdens on taxpayers, with no benefit to the state or its residents.
Of more than 13,250 plaintiffs in mass tort litigation in St. Louis City courts last year, barely 1,000 were Missouri residents. Only 242 actually lived in St. Louis. Instead, attorneys find a single Missouri resident with a claim and then join dozens, if not hundreds, of other cases involving unrelated plaintiffs to the court action just to gain access to St. Louis because attorneys believe jurors there are more sympathetic and therefore more likely to award large settlements.
With attorneys reaping 40 percent or more of most awards or settlements, it is not surprising there has been a flood of suits filed in Missouri, including some high-profile product liability cases with potentially massive judgements. The abuse of Missouri’s courts has prompted the American Tort Reform Foundation to place St. Louis in the No. 4 slot in its list of “Judicial Hellholes.”
Bills to reform joinder and venue have come before the Missouri Senate for years with multiple attempts to curb venue shopping and this influx of out-of-state cases that strain Missouri’s courts. Our efforts received a boost on February 13 from a Missouri Supreme Court opinion on a case involving talcum powder maker Johnson & Johnson. A plaintiff who had previously filed a case in St. Louis County attempted to join with a case being tried in the city of St. Louis. The Court affirmed that, for 40 years, their consistent interpretation of law has been that a plaintiff is not entitled to move a case to another venue based solely on joinder.
Tuesday afternoon, SB 7 was brought up for perfection on the floor of the Senate. Legislators opposed to the measure gained control of floor debate and continued talking through the night until 6:20 a.m. Wednesday. The all-night filibuster continued as Senate leadership and a small group of senators worked to draft compromise legislation. Once an acceptable product was achieved, it was presented to the entire Senate for its initial approval.
In the end, the bill remains true to its original purpose. It provides guidelines for determining venue and will help bring an end to the venue shopping that has brought so many lawsuits to Missouri courts. It also allows some cases that had progressed almost to trial, but would have been upended by the Supreme Court opinion, to proceed to their trial. Senate Bill 7 needs one more round of approval in the upper chamber before it moves to the House of Representatives. It is my hope that by the time the General Assembly concludes its work in May, we will have a joinder and venue bill for the governor to sign.
Thank you for reading this legislative report. You can contact my office at (573) 751-2108 if you have any questions. Thank you and we welcome your prayers for the proper application of state government.