JEFFERSON CITY — The head of the oldest general business trade association in the state credits new judicial reform in Missouri for helping St. Louis drop from No. 1 to No. 3 on the 2017-18 “judicial hellhole” rankings released by the American Tort Reform Foundation (ATRF) last week.
“After a lot of hard work, we passed a couple of reform bills last year that were, we think, instrumental in helping move us to that point, but we know we have more work to do and that we will be proposing more items in the 2018 (legislative) session," said Ray McCarty, president and CEO of Associated Industries of Missouri.
One of those reform bills established a standard for expert witnesses to be evaluated in the same way in Missouri state courts as they are evaluated in the federal courts.
Ray McCarty
| Associated Industries of Missouri
“By establishing the Daubert standard in state courts in Missouri, jurors will give expert testimony much more weight," McCarty said. "So we believe if you are going to claim to be an expert you need a standard for evaluating if the person is truly an expert or not, and we believe the Daubert standard has a proven track record of evaluating those experts in federal courts. We are happy to see that adopted in the state courts of Missouri.”
Another judicial reform was the collateral source bill.
“Essentially what that bill says is that if you’re in the cost recovery part of the trial you can’t recover more costs than were actually paid, either by you or your insurance company," McCarty said. "We thought that was truly common sense legislation."
In explaining the collateral source bill, McCarty notes that it’s the difference between the amount billed by a hospital, (for instance, $10,000) and the amount actually paid by the insurance company (which might have been $6,000). The collateral source bill says you can only recover the $6,000, not the $10,000.
“Prior to that change, attorneys were able to argue in the cost recovery part of the trial that the amount billed was the value of the medical services, so the $10,000 was able to be recovered even though nobody ever paid $10,000; they only paid the $6,000,” McCarty said.
McCarty noted the plaintiffs’ attorneys were not happy with the collateral source bill.
“Apparently the plaintiff’s attorneys saw that as a way to reduce the settlements they were able to get and they opposed it greatly," McCarty said. "We were able to get that passed finally."
McCarty said efforts at judicial reform continue.
“We do have venue on the agenda for this coming year," he said. "That’s an attempt to try and make sure cases brought in Missouri actually have a true Missouri connection and not just one connection that brings a ton of class-action lawsuits into the state of Missouri."
McCarty sees his role as basically a liaison between the business community and the legal community in Missouri. He views the ATRF ranking as not entirely a bad thing.
“I think the real value of those (judicial hellhole) listings is to drive change," he said. "It is very impactful when a reader can see that maybe we have some of the worst courts in the country, and how do we get back to center? I think that’s where everybody would like to be."