What a difference a year makes.  At this time last year, there was a level of optimism around the state like we have never seen, at least not in my lifetime.  We had a newly elected governor, state senate and house of representatives who appeared to be ready to rock-and -roll on conservative reforms that were/are long overdue in Louisiana.  Things seemed to finally be changing for the better in our state.

Does anyone still have that sense of optimism?  Not that I can see.  The consensus among those who are paying attention seems to be that anything meaningful that is going to happen has already happened.  And that means that the most important issues don’t seem to have much chance of being addressed or fixed.  Hopefully that assessment is wrong, but beginning with the fall session, the enthusiasm amongst the people of this state has quickly evaporated.

The single biggest crisis in Louisiana is insurance reform.  People are watching their premiums double, triple, or quadruple overnight.  Or worse, they are being told that they can no longer get insurance at all.  This applies to both property and auto insurance, and it doesn’t seem to ever stop.  Premiums have increased for most people every year for the past few years.  The citizens of Louisiana are reducing their insurance coverage and paying more money for less protection.  It is simply unsustainable, and our elected leaders seem to be employing the head-in-the-sand approach to fixing this crisis.  Yet strangely, almost all of them campaigned on fixing this issue.  So where is the disconnect?

Sadly, the trial lawyers were the winners in year one.  The only meaningful reform that became law in 2024 was a piece of legislation that doubled the amount of time (from one year to two) that lawyers are allowed to file a lawsuit when someone gets in an accident or car wreck.  Is anyone surprised that the only significant insurance legislation that became law seems to benefit only the trial lawyers?  The one big reform (the collateral source bill) that passed both the house and the senate was vetoed by the governor.  A lot of smaller pieces were passed, but none of those will make any real difference in the price of insurance in our state, and not even the legislature who passed those bills seem to think any different.

Speaking of trial lawyers, last week the news came out that a jury ruled that Chevron must pay $750 million dollars (plus or minus a couple of million bucks) for coastal restoration for damage that they allegedly caused 75 years ago.  Another huge win that benefits the trial attorneys more than anyone else.  Our state government was a part of this money grab, and make no mistake, a money grab is exactly what this was.  Our state government has collected lease money from oil and gas companies for that same 75 years.  Did they ever invest any of that money in protecting and restoring our coast?  The answer is no, of course.

This is the equivalent of a landlord letting someone live in his rent house for 75 years, spending every penny of the rent money he collected on liquor and cigarettes without ever spending a penny to maintain the house itself.  When the tenant finally moves out because the house has become a dump, the landlord sues the tenant for damaging the house.  But where did all that rent money go?  It was apparently wasted, like most every other dollar that our state government has ever gotten its hands on.  It certainly wasn’t used to improve our roads, public education or returned to the people in the form of tax cuts or used on much of anything else meaningful.

Some may think that forcing the oil companies to pay for coastal restoration is a good thing.  And you are certainly free to have that opinion.  But I ask you to look around south Louisiana.  Be sure to make a trip through Houma, which was once a thriving city due to the oil industry.  Our oil and gas industry, like our insurance market, is dying along with many of the cities and towns that it once supported.  And instead of trying to figure out how to save it, our state government along with the trial lawyers are going through its pockets trying to grab every dollar that they can before the industry passes away.  And who will pay for coastal restoration when the oil companies are all gone, along with all the jobs that they once provided for the people of our state?  The answer, of course, is no one.

It is completely understandable if a reasonable man reached the conclusion that Louisiana is really run by the trial lawyer lobby after watching the events of the past few months.  It certainly looks like our elected leaders defer to those lawyers over any legislation that may make a real difference in the state.  It is also clear that trial lawyers like this state exactly the way it is.  And why shouldn’t they?  They make enough money to fly our government leaders to their private ranches in Texas on their private jets.  The details for that have been widely publicized lately, but it certainly is not the first or last time that has / will happen.  Louisiana is just great as it currently is for the lawyers.  Not so much for the rest of us.

This does seem short-sighted even for the trial attorneys, though.  Who will they sue once they have run everyone else out of the state?  Will they start suing each other?  Or will they have accumulated so much wealth by then that they won’t care if there is no one left to sue?  I would bet on the latter outcome.  They seem to be well on the way to that already.  Meanwhile, the rest of us may need an exit plan before whatever group or industry that we happen to be a part of becomes the next target that our state helps the trial lawyers to milk dry.