Nothing has altered the way lawyers practice civil law in Texas more than tort reform has. It’s a movement praised by business owners fearful of damage awards, pilloried by plaintiffs lawyers seeking redress for injured clients and lamented by defense attorneys who have seen their business decline as a result.
In the 1970s, the Texas Legislature passed civil laws such as the Deceptive Trade Practices Act, which gave consumers a new cause of action against businesses for false or misleading acts that resulted in harm, and loosened a strict contributory-negligence rule that previously had disallowed recovery if a plaintiff bore any percentage of the fault, says Tommy Fibich, a partner in Houston’s Fibich, Hampton & Leebron who worked as a legislative liaison for the Texas Trial Lawyers Association.
