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Florida Justice Reform Institute

Chamber Pumps Money into McCollum 527

September 28, 2010/in News Service of Florida

 

News Service of FL

CHAMBER PUMPS MONEY INTO MCCOLLUM 527

By JOHN KENNEDY
THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA
 
HE CAPITAL, TALLAHASSEE, July 28, 2010… The U.S. Chamber of Commerce steered $500,000 to a political committee associated with Bill McCollum a few hours before Wednesday’s announcement that the Republican gubernatorial contender was being endorsed by the Florida chamber.

The national organization sent the money to the Florida First Initiative, a 527 committee that has been running TV ads attacking McCollum’s Republican gubernatorial rival, Rick Scott.

Also on Tuesday, the committee collected a $40,000 check from the Committee for Florida Justice Reform, another 527 loosely associated with the Florida Chamber, whose treasurer is William Large, a former advisor to ex-Gov. Jeb Bush, and chaired by Panhandle hotelier and investor Charlie Hilton.

Such committees draw their name from the section of the IRS code that gives them tax-exempt status.

Another new Florida First contributor is Dennis McGillicuddy, a Sarasota attorney and investor and brother of former Florida U.S. Sen. Connie Mack.

McGillicuddy donated $5,000 to the committee, whose TV spots challenge Scott for having led Columbia/HCA shortly before the health care company paid a record $1.7 billion in fines and settlements for Medicaid and Medicare fraud.

Big-money contributions to 527s have emerged as a powerful undercurrent in the Republican primary for governor, with McCollum relying on at least three committees for help and Scott forming his own committee in an attempt to sidestep campaign finance limits.

Florida First’s biggest contributor continues to be House Speaker-designate Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, who steered $727,000 to it last month from a 527 he controls. But incoming Senate President Mike Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, also has emerged as a Florida First donor, having given the organization $190,000 since mid-July, according to finance reports.

The U.S. Chamber’s financial support for McCollum comes shortly after it also recently endorsed Republican Marco Rubio in Florida’s U.S. Senate race.

With the endorsements, Rubio and McCollum gain a link to organization with a couple of positions that prove controversial in Florida. Among them, is the chamber’s call for an end to the federal embargo of Cuba and Chamber President Tom Donohue’s recent suggestion that taxpayers should help cover the cost of Gulf cleanup, easing the impact on BP, a chamber member.

The U.S. Chamber later “clarified” Donohue’s remarks, saying cleanup should “not be on the backs of American taxpayers or businesses.”

Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, distanced himself from the chamber’s Cuba stance, saying “I hope to encourage the chamber and my colleagues in Washington” to drop the push.

McCollum campaign spokeswoman Kristy Campbell said the candidate is “pleased to enjoy tremendous support from business leaders and business owners around the state.”

https://www.newsserviceflorida.com/archives/chamber-pumps-money-into-mccollum-527/article_907920ef-8605-5af6-bea6-bd53a0515b5f.html#tncms-source=login 

https://www.fljustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/fjri-news.jpg 800 800 RAD Tech https://www.fljustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Florida-Justice-Reform-Institute.jpg RAD Tech2010-09-28 15:51:472024-11-26 09:04:04Chamber Pumps Money into McCollum 527
Florida Justice Reform Institute

Scott Unveils Sweeping Slate of Lawsuit Limits

September 20, 2010/in News Service of Florida

 

News Service of FL

SCOTT UNVEILS SWEEPING SLATE OF LAWSUIT LIMITS

By JOHN KENNEDY
THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

THE CAPITAL, TALLAHASSEE, Sept. 20, 2010…Shortly after he was elected, Gov. Charlie Crist set the tone for his term as chief executive by declaring, “lawyers are back,” signaling an end to his predecessor, Gov. Jeb Bush’s, support for lawsuit limits.

But Monday, Republican Rick Scott again made trial lawyers a target – outlining a handful of legislative proposals that would make it tougher for car manufacturers, insurance companies, and doctors to be sued.

Scott unveiled the measures as part of a broad package of pocketbook issues that he said was designed to fix a “culture of failure,” he attached by name to Democratic opponent Alex Sink. Scott, however, made no mention of the Republican-ruled Legislature which has written the laws in Florida for more than a decade.

Still, most of Scott’s push for reducing the liability of state-run Citizens Property Insurance Corp., sounded much like the tactics tried by Crist and lawmakers – who have struggled to bring private insurers into the hurricane-prone state. Similarly, his plan to lower insurance costs stemming from sinkhole claims relies heavily on reducing “abuse and fraud” within the system – an approach that lawmakers also have pursued.

Scott, however, does appear poised to break new ground – if elected – by advancing the most sweeping package of pro-business lawsuit limits since shortly after Bush took office in 1999. The House Speaker that year was John Thrasher, now a state senator and chairman of the Florida Republican Party and, like most establishment Republicans, a recent convert to the Scott campaign.

House and Senate GOP leaders already have said they expect to impose new lawsuit restrictions next spring – a drive Sink and Democratic allies including trial lawyers, unions and state workers are certain to oppose.

“About the only place citizens are equal to big corporations is in front of a judge,” said Kyra Jennings, a Sink spokeswoman. “Unfortunately, Rick Scott’s so-called reform plan would close the door to the courthouse for many Floridians.”

Scott has cast himself as a common-sense business professional, whose outside vantage point will allow him to repair a broken state government.

Jennings, however, pointed to another part of Scott’s outsider background, serving as CEO of hospital giant Columbia/HCA, which paid $1.7 billion in fines and settlement to resolve Medicaid and Medicare fraud accusations three years after he left the company, saying . Making it harder to sue, she said, makes sense for Scott.

“It’s to be expected from an unethical businessman whose company committed one of the largest frauds against taxpayers in history,” she said.

Scott’s civil justice proposals include shielding insurers from “bad faith” lawsuits brought by those not covered by a policy, but who suffered damages or legal costs. Scott also would redefine Florida’s “crashworthiness doctrine,” giving vehicle manufacturers additional defenses in suits involving defects; more legal protections for companies that partner with governments to provide disaster relief; tighter limits on expert testimony; and liability limits for doctors who treat Medicaid patients.

The Medicaid provision has already been advanced by Senate President-designate Mike Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, as a means to rein-in skyrocketing costs in the state-federal program.

“I think we’d be very supportive” of what Scott outlined, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joe Negron, R-Stuart, told the News Service of Florida. “We’ve heard repeatedly that some physicians won’t treat Medicaid patients because of the legal risks involved.”

Scott’s package of lawsuit limits was debuted just days after he was endorsed by the Florida Chamber of Commerce, which regularly prods lawmakers for measures to block business lawsuits. William Large, who heads the Florida Justice Reform Institute, started by the chamber, said that at least half of Scott’s plan reflected issues his organization has earlier promoted.

“This is a very ambitious agenda,” Large said.

But Paul Jess, general counsel for the Florida Justice Association, the organization representing plaintiffs’ attorneys, said Scott is more intent on protecting car manufacturers, insurance companies, and bad doctors over Floridians, or even small businesses that could become the target for more law suits under the plan.

“If he thinks he’s going after trial lawyers, he’s really making businesses and people the target,” Jess said.

–END–09/20/10
https://new.newsserviceflorida.com/app/post.html?postID=3475

https://www.fljustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/fjri-news.jpg 800 800 RAD Tech https://www.fljustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Florida-Justice-Reform-Institute.jpg RAD Tech2010-09-20 15:51:492024-12-11 17:47:59Scott Unveils Sweeping Slate of Lawsuit Limits
Florida Justice Reform Institute

Florida Workers’ Comp Law Shields Disney World, SeaWorld from Suits

September 17, 2010/in The Insurance Insider

 

The Insurance Insider

Florida Workers’ Comp Law Shields Disney World, SeaWorld from Suits

By Jason Garcia | September 17, 2010

They are two of Central Florida’s biggest and best-known employers — and both face the prospect of potentially ugly lawsuits stemming from a worker’s death on the job.

And yet Walt Disney World, which is being sued by the mother of a monorail driver killed in a train collision in July 2009, and SeaWorld Orlando, which is bracing for a similar suit from the husband of a killer-whale trainer drowned by an orca last February, are well insulated.

The reason: Florida law gives employers near-ironclad protection from lawsuits sparked by on-the-job injuries and fatalities. It’s a legacy of a 7-year-old overhaul of the state’s workers’ compensation laws championed by former Republican Gov. Jeb Bush and Florida’s business lobby.

Critics say the system is too heavily slanted in favor of businesses.

The tight clamp on lawsuits is “a horrible burden on the injured worker,” said Matthew Noyes, a personal-injury lawyer who heads the workers’ compensation group at the firm Perenich, Caulfield, Avril & Noyes in Sarasota. “The practical effect is that employers don’t feel the pressure to make their workplace as safe as possible for their workers.”

Boosters of the current laws argue that the system holds down costs by ensuring standardized payments in accidents and by protecting businesses from the threat of outsized jury awards.

“Workers’ comp is very predictable from the insurance perspective, and workers’ comp carriers can price this product and a business and an employer can figure out what the cost is going to be and go forward and do business,” said William Large, president of the Tallahassee-based Florida Justice Reform Institute, a business-financed group that lobbies for tighter lawsuit restrictions. “Tort is very unpredictable.”

Workers’ compensation was originally established to steer claims arising from on-the-job accidents away from courts altogether.

In Florida, as in most other states, most businesses are required to carry workers’ compensation insurance. And when an employee is injured on the job — regardless of who was at fault in the accident — those policies are supposed to ensure prompt payments covering medical costs and lost wages.

Workers gain the ability to obtain payment without having to go through expensive and protracted litigation. But they also lose their ability to sue their employer for larger sums.

In accidents that lead to the death of an employee, cumulative wage payments are capped at $150,000, plus up to $7,500 to cover funeral expenses and in the cases of surviving spouses payment of student fees for as many as 1,800 classroom hours at sanctioned career centers or 80 semester hours at community colleges.

Courts have long held that there are some limited exceptions to employers’ immunity from lawsuits. In 1993, for instance, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that businesses were entitled to protections from suits provided they did not intentionally harm employees or engage in conduct that was “substantially certain” to result in injury or death.

Then in 2000, the court opened the window wider: In a case stemming from an explosion at an Alachua County chemical plant that killed one worker and seriously injured another, the court defined “substantially certain” to mean a situation in which a business should have known — rather than actually knew — its actions were likely to lead to the injury or death of a worker.

That ruling outraged Florida’s business community, which was already complaining of widespread workers’ compensation fraud and skyrocketing insurance costs. Companies felt “the language the Supreme Court had put out could really and significantly erode the protections from tort liability that the employers are paying workers’ comp coverage to have,” said Tamela Perdue, general counsel for Associated Industries of Florida, one of the state’s largest business trade groups.

Industry lobbyists found allies in the state Capitol. In 2003, then-Gov. Bush and the Republican-controlled Legislature approved a 182-page rewrite of the state’s workers’ compensation laws that, among many other provisions, increased some benefits and curtailed others while also imposing strict caps on the fees lawyers could earn in such cases. And it dramatically re-strengthened businesses’ lawsuit shield.

Lawmakers abandoned the Supreme Court’s “should have known” standard, instead deciding that lawsuits in worker injuries could go forward only if an employer engaged in conduct that it “knew” was “virtually certain” to lead to injury or death. And they added a provision that requires any injured employee suing his or her employer to also prove that the risk was not apparent and that the business deliberately concealed the danger.

What’s more, the legislation requires that employees prove it all by “clear and convincing evidence” a higher bar than another commonly used legal threshold, “preponderance of the evidence.”

It may be the biggest legal hurdles facing the families of Austin Wuennenberg, the 21-year-old Disney monorail driver killed July 5, 2009, and Dawn Brancheau, the 40-year-old SeaWorld killer-whale trainer drowned Feb. 24 of this year. Wuennenberg’s mother has already filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Disney; Brancheau’s husband has hired lawyers but has so far not sued.

Both parties would appear to have ammunition for suits: Federal regulators investigating the accidents cited Disney with a “serious” safety violation and noted multiple monorail-policy lapses and separately charged SeaWorld with an even-stiffer, “willful” violation and recommended that trainers never again be allowed unprotected contact with the killer whale that killed Brancheau.

But Noyes, the Sarasota personal-injury lawyer, called the lawsuit requirements set by Florida law “nearly impossible” to meet.

Disney and SeaWorld, for their parts, declined to discuss the litigation in detail. “At this point the most appropriate way to respond to this legal matter is through the court process,” said Disney spokeswoman Andrea Finger.

“Florida law concerning workers’ compensation applies to the accident Feb. 24 that resulted in the tragic death of Dawn Brancheau,” added SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment spokesman Fred Jacobs. “Any discussion of litigation outside that context is premature.”

https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/southeast/2010/09/17/113315.htm

https://www.fljustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/fjri-news.jpg 800 800 RAD Tech https://www.fljustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Florida-Justice-Reform-Institute.jpg RAD Tech2010-09-17 15:51:502024-11-26 09:04:56Florida Workers’ Comp Law Shields Disney World, SeaWorld from Suits
Florida Justice Reform Institute

Disney, SeaWorld accident lawsuits face tough odds

September 13, 2010/in Orlando Sentinel

 

Orlando Sentinel

Disney, SeaWorld accident lawsuits face tough odds

Florida law protects Disney, other theme parks against wrongful death lawsuits.
September 13, 2010 | By Jason Garcia, Orlando Sentinel

They are two of Central Florida’s biggest and best-known employers — and both face the prospect of potentially ugly lawsuits stemming from a worker’s death on the job.

And yet Walt Disney World, which is being sued by the mother of a monorail driver killed in a train collision in July 2009, and SeaWorld Orlando, which is bracing for a similar suit from the husband of a killer-whale trainer drowned by an orca last February, are well insulated.

The reason: Florida law gives employers near-ironclad protection from lawsuits sparked by on-the-job injuries and fatalities. It’s a legacy of a 7-year-old overhaul of the state’s workers’ compensation laws championed by former Republican Gov. Jeb Bush and Florida’s business lobby.

Critics say the system is too heavily slanted in favor of businesses.

The tight clamp on lawsuits is “a horrible burden on the injured worker,” said Matthew Noyes, a personal-injury lawyer who heads the workers’ compensation group at the firm Perenich, Caulfield, Avril & Noyes in Sarasota. “The practical effect is that employers don’t feel the pressure to make their workplace as safe as possible for their workers.”

Boosters of the current laws argue that the system holds down costs by ensuring standardized payments in accidents — and by protecting businesses from the threat of outsized jury awards.

“Workers’ comp is very predictable from the insurance perspective, and workers’ comp carriers can price this product and a business and an employer can figure out what the cost is going to be and go forward and do business,” said William Large, president of the Tallahassee-based Florida Justice Reform Institute, a business-financed group that lobbies for tighter lawsuit restrictions. “Tort is very unpredictable.”

Workers’ compensation was originally established to steer claims arising from on-the-job accidents away from courts altogether.

In Florida, as in most other states, most businesses are required to carry workers’ compensation insurance. And when an employee is injured on the job — regardless of who was at fault in the accident — those policies are supposed to ensure prompt payments covering medical costs and lost wages.

Workers gain the ability to obtain payment without having to go through expensive and protracted litigation. But they also lose their ability to sue their employer for larger sums.

In accidents that lead to the death of an employee, cumulative wage payments are capped at $150,000, plus up to $7,500 to cover funeral expenses and — in the cases of surviving spouses — payment of student fees for as many as 1,800 classroom hours at sanctioned career centers or 80 semester hours at community colleges.

Courts have long held that there are some limited exceptions to employers’ immunity from lawsuits. In 1993, for instance, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that businesses were entitled to protections from suits provided they did not intentionally harm employees or engage in conduct that was “substantially certain” to result in injury or death.

Then in 2000, the court opened the window wider: In a case stemming from an explosion at an Alachua County chemical plant that killed one worker and seriously injured another, the court defined “substantially certain” to mean a situation in which a business should have known — rather than actually knew — its actions were likely to lead to the injury or death of a worker.

That ruling outraged Florida’s business community, which was already complaining of widespread workers’ compensation fraud and skyrocketing insurance costs. Companies felt “the language the Supreme Court had put out could really and significantly erode the protections from tort liability that the employers are paying workers’ comp coverage to have,” said Tamela Perdue, general counsel for Associated Industries of Florida, one of the state’s largest business trade groups.

Industry lobbyists found allies in the state Capitol. In 2003, then-Gov. Bush and the Republican-controlled Legislature approved a 182-page rewrite of the state’s workers’ compensation laws that, among many other provisions, increased some benefits and curtailed others while also imposing strict caps on the fees lawyers could earn in such cases. And it dramatically re-strengthened businesses’ lawsuit shield.

Lawmakers abandoned the Supreme Court’s “should have known” standard, instead deciding that lawsuits in worker injuries could go forward only if an employer engaged in conduct that it “knew” was “virtually certain” to lead to injury or death. And they added a provision that requires any injured employee suing his or her employer to also prove that the risk was not apparent and that the business deliberately concealed the danger.

What’s more, the legislation requires that employees prove it all by “clear and convincing evidence” — a higher bar than another commonly used legal threshold, “preponderance of the evidence.”

It may be the biggest legal hurdles facing the families of Austin Wuennenberg, the 21-year-old Disney monorail driver killed July 5, 2009, and Dawn Brancheau, the 40-year-old SeaWorld killer-whale trainer drowned Feb. 24 of this year. Wuennenberg’s mother has already filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Disney; Brancheau’s husband has hired lawyers but has so far not sued.

Both parties would appear to have ammunition for suits: Federal regulators investigating the accidents cited Disney with a “serious” safety violation and noted multiple monorail-policy lapses and separately charged SeaWorld with an even-stiffer, “willful” violation and recommended that trainers never again be allowed unprotected contact with the killer whale that killed Brancheau.

But Noyes, the Sarasota personal-injury lawyer, called the lawsuit requirements set by Florida law “nearly impossible” to meet.

Disney and SeaWorld, for their parts, declined to discuss the litigation in detail. “At this point the most appropriate way to respond to this legal matter is through the court process,” said Disney spokeswoman Andrea Finger.

“Florida law concerning workers’ compensation applies to the accident Feb. 24 that resulted in the tragic death of Dawn Brancheau,” added SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment spokesman Fred Jacobs. “Any discussion of litigation outside that context is premature.”

Jason Garcia can be reached at [email protected] or 407-420-5414.

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2010-09-13/business/os-cfb-cover-death-suits-091310-20100912_1_accident-payments-compensation-laws/2

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