Greetings from the Virginia General Assembly

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Who was it that said prior to the Revolutionary War, "We need to hang together or indeed we’ll all hang separately"? I think it was Ben Franklin , but I won’t stake my life on it.

I was thinking of that sentiment when listening to the debate on House Bill 1590 – a trial lawyers bill that would increase the maximum jurisdictional limit of general district courts from $15,000 to $25,000. The issue is of grave concern to the insurance company representatives as they have a lot of cases that fall in this dollar area, and there’s no discovery allowed in general district court.

In debate, the insurance representatives asked for an amendment to the bill which would have allowed the "right of removal"; otherwise, cases would be appealed after trial and, in effect, the cases would be tried twice. Sounds like a reasonable request.

However, not only did the trial lawyers support HB 1590 without amendment but a number of business groups...one after another, in lock-step with the trial lawyers – supported the bill without amendment. Certainly odd bedfellows.

Now, I am not sure that the insurance industry representatives appealed to the business community interests in advance to support their amendment but clearly you would have thought that some of the businesses would have questioned who they were following.

Indeed, we took a second look at one of the bills we sort of liked because it was so strongly supported by the trial lawyers....and solidly opposed by our company partners. That bill will need to play out without our support (not to say that we don’t sometimes have honest disagreements with our company partners).

I was disappointed in the business interest positions as I can’t possibly imagine that their concerns would be to the extent that they could not have supported the right of removal amendment. A disappointing day and, from my perspective, not a proud day for business.

The "fight" now goes to the Senate and is perhaps worth a call to your senator to allow right of removal in general district court. We’ll be there to support our company partners. But it makes you wonder – if the business community asks for the support of the insurance community, should we only look at bills with our blinders on?

From the Virginia General Assembly working for you and your agency,

Robert N. Bradshaw Jr., MAM
President & CEO