Despite incalculable positive assets, Louisiana always brings up the rear in business growth and attraction. With all the talk of how out of control litigation has driven up private insurance costs, we cannot lose sight of the other negative impact on the prosperity of our people, the impact of our existing civil justice system.

We must first accept the reality that there is a direct coupling of business viability to the happiness of our people. No good paying jobs no prosperity; no opportunity, no chance to see a better future; no opportunities, outmigration and poverty. Sound familiar?

Next, we must understand that a fair civil justice system is one of the leading indicators of business viability. Just as average citizens, businesses suffer outrageous costs brought on by profligate litigation, but they too must expect limits to being forced into court over business disputes and a fair venue not overwhelmed by local politics.

So, how do I define civil justice fairness? Well, as a business person, my simple view is that my business could only expect to prosper in a state in which litigation is the exception, not the rule. Further, in a state where the legal climate hasn’t been driven by trial lawyer dominated legislation. Neither of these describe Louisiana.

I suppose that the simplest way to visualize Louisiana’s civil justice climate is that we have one of the highest lawyer to population ratios anywhere and that our legal climate generates substantially more litigation than most states. Good for lawyers, not good for businesses, and by default citizens.

Louisiana has the assets that should make it one of the most attractive and prosperous states, yet we fail miserably. Sadly, the conversation in the Legislature as reflected in the media is about how the legislature will derail civil justice reform (reform taking the lead in competing states), and, so that politicians can be assured of their continuing financial support, how will legislative leaders forge compromise to make the handful of trial lawyers happy. Worse, the conversation expands to how to divert the public’s attention away from the economic drag of our civil justice system and to focus that attention on insurers. The irony is that if there were profits to be made here we would be awash insurers, but just the opposite is the case.

The current reform package passed by the House would put us back into competition with Florida, Georgia, and other growing states in a competition not based on how much tax money we have to offer to overcome our bad business climate, but on how much we welcome business to our favorable growth economy.

So, now the show moves to the Senate. The media is already writing the obituary of the House’s civil justice reform efforts. Perhaps we will all be surprised if Senators put prosperity of citizens over prosperity of lawyers. If not, the only hope for our people will be in how much of our taxes we are wiling to continue to divert from other critical state imperatives in order to keep the trial lawyer oligarchy happy and fat.