Well, Governor Landry strong-armed his way to victory on HB148, which has little to do with insurance rates, and everything to do with giving himself political cover when half-measures prevent our rates from falling. It’s ironic, because he used intimidation tactics to get his way, without really listening to what consumers or industry experts wanted. However, I am going to choose to reflect on an otherwise great weekend gone by.
Everybody loves a long holiday weekend in Texas (especially Governor Landry). My wife and I couldn’t wait to get out of town for a long weekend, and I’m pretty sure we’re not the only ones. We took a quick trip down from Baton Rouge to Galveston, Texas, driving down I-45 from Houston. I certainly see why so many Louisianians have relocated to the Houston metro over the last several years. To be clear, I am sharing my own anecdotal observations, and I’ll leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusions.
Besides the tremendous amount of new construction, the other thing that caught my attention was the amount of “we’re hiring” signs and billboards in Texas. You couldn’t go more than a mile without seeing someone seeking employees! What I didn’t see was a personal injury attorney billboard every hundred yards. Perhaps there’s a correlation?
As my wife and I were returning home, we discussed several of Texas’ advantages, including how much better Texas roads were. Goodness knows that our poor roads have contributed to countless accidents. Perhaps there’s also a correlation between quality of life, quality of infrastructure, and lower insurance rates? Could it be that Texas has more capital to spend because less money per capita is spent on frivolous lawsuits (and frivolous politics)?
Of course we hit traffic coming back into Louisiana, so we decided to try an activity to pass the time. We started counting personal injury attorney billboards that we saw. Between the I-10 bridge in Lake Charles and College Drive exit in Baton Rouge, we saw eighty six billboards for personal injury attorneys! Perhaps I’m in the wrong business. I only saw one billboard for an insurance agent on that same space of highway. In fact I’ve seen more billboards advertising “how much money the big insurance companies make in Louisiana” than billboards advertising for the insurance companies themselves! If insurance companies were the biggest problem, and were making so much money, wouldn’t we see insurance billboards all over the state as well? Maybe it’s that the injury attorneys are maybe so hard up for cash that need to attract business any way possible? That’s probably it…
I’m not saying that insurance companies don’t bear some of the responsibility for our high rates, but allow me a little freedom to draw an analogy if you will. Let’s look at our “comparative fault” legislation as it currently stands. This comes straight from AKD Law Firm’s website (BTW, Rico Alvendia, the “A” in AKD, was the King of Washington, DC Mardi Gras last year. I am sure that was just a coincidence, though):
You can still recover damages even if you were 99% at fault…In Louisiana, the concept of comparative fault is governed by Louisiana Civil Code 2323. This law ensures that a plaintiff’s negligence doesn’t completely prevent them from recovering damages. To his credit, Our Governor is trying to change this. HB 431, championed by Governor Landry, seeks to the following:
HB 431 would change this to a modified comparative fault system, where a plaintiff’s recovery is barred if they are 51% or more at fault. This means that if a plaintiff is found to be 51% or more at fault, they cannot recover any damages, even if the defendant is also at fault. Under this same logic, shouldn’t the Governor focus his attention on fixing the cause of the MAJORITY of the problem? The pure comparative negligence rule that Louisiana follows is one of the most forgiving systems for plaintiffs, and plaintiff’s attorneys. I don’t know about you, but I kind of feel like the attorneys are at least 51% to blame, and deserve all of the focus…