CHARLESTON – For decades, West Virginia’s legal climate ranked among the worst in the nation. This negative attention arose from real defects in our state’s civil justice system that put our state courts solidly outside of the national mainstream – a non-starter for job creators choosing where to invest and expand their business.
When the Republican majority came to power in the 82nd Legislature, state leaders advanced tried-and-tested legal reforms from across the country over significant opposition from the special interests who benefited from our state’s misfortunes. Over the objections of these powerful, monied interests, Republicans eliminated policy outliers, reinforced first principles of our legal system, and ended the worst excesses of the trial bar and their Democrat allies in government.
The fruits of these reforms can be found in West Virginia’s below-national-average unemployment rate, record-setting revenues, and overall 10th-best business climate ranking – any one of which would have been unimaginable under the former legal regime.
Keaton
The benefits accrued to our state and its citizens through the elimination of our competitive disadvantages on the legal reform front have been plentiful. Such benefits suggest that continued legal reforms would yield competitive advantages that are attractive to jobs and investment. Establishing a competitive advantage in legal climate requires us to further shift courts into line with the first principles of a just legal system to address the major sources of lawsuit abuse and out of control litigation costs.
A core first principle of the western legal tradition is its goal of making whole the injured person. Predatory contingency fee agreements fly in the face of this core belief and serve as magnets for lawsuit abusers. Personal injury lawyers oftentimes target potential clients through deceptive television advertising with promises of riches only to lay claim to an exorbitant portion of any recovery the client receives – enriching the attorney at the expense of the client. These unseemly, predatory fee arrangements deprive injured people of the recovery they’re entitled to under the first principles of our legal system. The Legislature can address this issue by setting tough but fair standards to govern contingent fee agreements to keep attorneys honest and injured people whole.
In a constitutional republic like ours, laws are agreed to by the representatives of the people, enforced by public servants, and applied as impartially as possible. Laws prohibit citizens from harming one another with criminal implications if they choose to do so. The longstanding practice of punitive damages blurs the lines between making people whole, a key principle of civil justice, and the government punishing wrongdoers. The only policy “lever” afforded to a trial court is the ability to take money from one person and give it to another. In instances where the plaintiff is seeking recovery for economic damages, this makes perfect sense. How sensible is it, though, to punish a citizen by taking their money and possessions to give to another without the recipient demonstrating commensurate harm? If the civil justice system is going to be used to punish wrongdoing, such damages should be constrained to conduct which violates the law.
The American justice system was not built to be abused and adherence to first principles provide the tools necessary to combat such abuses. If we rediscover the courage to combat special interests, the next generation of legal reforms will yield benefits similar in kind, but hopefully larger in magnitude, to the last – more jobs, more growth, and more prosperity for the people of West Virginia.
Keaton, a Republican, represents Roane and southern Jackson counties in the West Virginia House of Delegates.