Tort reform in jeopardy

Chief Executive, The, June, 1995 by Jon Christensen

On the Senate floor, the bill was broadened substantially. First, punitive damages in the medical malpractice cases were limited. Then, those caps were applied to all civil cases, as in the House bill. But the broadened bill failed to pass muster when the vote to cut off debate was reached. In other words, that bill died of filibuster.

As Chief Executive went to press, the struggle was still in progress. The hurdles of passing some bill, resolving differences with the House bill, and getting a presidential signature lay ahead. Regardless, I believe expanding the reform legislation as we did in the House will increase, not decrease, support for it in the country. Broadening the legislation brings into the pro-reform fold nonprofit groups, the small business community, health-care providers, and a nationwide base of support for overhauling the U.S. legal system.

Tinkering with product liability would be positive, but it cannot generate the ground-swell of support that real, revolutionary change can. Nor would such tinkering produce the kind of relief a really muscular bill - like the one created in the House - promises. With the legal system so out of control, the pro-business community must unify to support a bill that begins to solve the problems of the legal system for the whole country and every industry, not just a select few. If that bill must come about in the 105th Congress, so be it.

Rep. Jon Christensen is the first-term congressman from the second district of Nebraska. the Omaha area. He is a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, among the first Repuplican freshmen to be named to the panel since then-Rep. George Bush in 1966.