Texas Governor Rick Perry made tort reform a cornerstone of his campaign when he was elected in 2000. Under his leadership, the state has passed caps on noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases, asbestos and silica litigation reforms and multidistrict litigation procedures to take matters away from plaintiff-friendly courts.
But Perry wasn’t content to stop there. He was after the holy grail of tort reform—a loser-pays law. Common in Europe but unprecedented stateside, a loser-pays system requires the loser to shoulder the prevailing party’s court costs and legal bills. And Perry almost made it happen when the Texas House of Representatives passed H.B. 274 in May. The statute would have made Texas the first state to shift the burden of litigation to the losing party, erecting a major barrier to plaintiffs without the financial wherewithal to risk incurring massive legal bills.
