I’ve been following the progress of several Minnesota “tort reform” measures. I put that in quotation marks because most of the bills in question don’t just reform the law of tort; they also eviscerate a raft of consumer laws, robbing consumers of important protections. These are laws designed to prevent fraud, harassment, and abuse. If enforced, these laws could help prevent another economic meltdown. These bills could hasten the next recession by shielding defendants from the law and encouraging the sort of behavior that led to the last one.
SF 149 makes class certification decisions immediately appealable. This will add years to the initial phase of class action lawsuits, inflating costs, delaying justice, and making it more difficult to track down members of the class if it is ultimately certified. In particular, it gives corporate defendants a strong tool for delaying proceedings, which will discourage class action lawyers from taking lawsuits.
While I have complained about class action lawyers in the past, this bill will do nothing to answer my complaints. Instead, it will make the situation worse by encouraging even smaller settlements for consumers.
This bill would also raise the conciliation court threshold to $10,000. I’m neutral on this. I don’t think it’s a great idea, but it’s not a terrible one, either.
SF 429 essentially requires courts to make attorney fee awards “proportional” to any damages awarded. I’ve already talked about why this is a dumb idea in this post and this one. The bottom line: the whole point of adding attorney fee provisions to consumer protection laws is that the damages awarded are often small, so that attorneys cannot take the case if they won’t be compensated. In other words, attorney fees are almost always unproportional to the damages awarded. If that weren’t the case, these laws won’t be enforced.
SF 373 reduces the general Minnesota statute of limitations from six to four years. I’m actually okay with this one, since debt buyers have long taken advantage of Minnesota’s long statute of limitations to rack up obscene amounts of interest.
The next stop for these bills is Governor Dayton’s desk. I’m hopeful he will veto the first two.
(photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tinytall/5068714787/)
