MIAMI—Executive Director of Florida Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse (FLCALA) Tom Gaitens on Thursday explained the impact and challenges of Tort reform on the business community, its environment, and governmental relations in the state.
"Our civil litigation, our civil justice system is paramount in creating a fair and equitable distribution of resources," Gaitens said. "The way that is done is if people are aggrieved or they are harmed, we use the civil justice system to make them better and make them whole. A good vibrant civil justice system helps all Floridians, helps all Americans."
Tort reform is legally defined as limiting an "individual's rights to file a lawsuit, making it more difficult to obtain a trial by jury, and limiting the amount of damages awarded to the injured party."
While hoping Lady Justice to be blind, Gaitens stressed trial lobbies are often large spenders and impact Tort outcomes.
"Unfortunately, it tips the scales in favor of trial attorneys doing business in Florida," Gaitens said.
According to Gaitens, Floridians spend $1238 on average on "bad" civil litigation costs. He also noted the cost for an average family of four in the state is $5,000.
"That's taking away disposable income for better things than the cost of billboard lawyers doing their business and impacting us in a very desperate way," Gaitens said.
Moreover, things look even worse in South Florida, which Gaitens mentioned was an astronomical $2100.
"It's all because of the environment of civil litigation does not value fairness and equity, and disproportionally favors the trial lobby and their interests," Gaitens said.
Moving forward, Gaitens said his goal was to mitigate costs on the community and push for better Torm reform legislation in Tallahassee. He also noted the issue has improved since 2019 and through corresponding legislative sessions.
Specifically, Gaitens mentioned HB 837, which altered Florida's civil litigation laws to cut the statute of limitations in half from four years to two years and placed restrictions on attorney fees.
"When 837 passed in the three days between its passage and the governor signing it, the trial lobby and trial attorneys in Florida filed nearly 100,000 lawsuits," Gaitens said. "We are digging out of that. The average length of these lawsuits is about 18 months, so we're on that last 6-month phase of those coming through the system."
He prefaced his comment by noting that Florida has a 1237% higher number of lawsuits compared to other states.
To the point, Gaitens stressed HB 837 had yet to materialize into "its greatest successes." However, he mentioned the bill has helped to decline lawsuit rates and reduce the Tort Tax.
But not all is good news, as Gaitans warned of two bills in the Florida Legislature, HB 451 and SB 554, that are pushing back against the progress.
"I think this is a major mistake if we do not forge our way forward. It's important that we encourage Floridians to call their legislatures, engage with their state Senate, and encourage the governor to not allow any fallback, any ceding of ground that we have arrived at over the last five years," Gaitens said.
He added any regression would create a "sandy underpinning" of trying to create fairness and balance in the state.
"Bad Civil Justice hurts everyone with the Tort tax," he said.
