Issue Position: Legal Reform

Issue Position

Issue Position: Legal Reform

"This bill (Class Action Fairness Act) did a good job of balancing appropriate and necessary legal reform, while maintaining the rights of consumers to bring legitimate class action claims."— Nebraska's Senator Ben Nelson

Photo of a person's hand signing a contract or letter. Unnecessary lawsuits against employers and producers are driving up costs to consumers, costing America jobs, putting a drag on our economy and stifling innovation and competition. Nebraska's Senator Ben Nelson supports legislative legal reforms in the Senate that will curtail frivolous lawsuits, preserve jobs, compensate victims, protect consumers and encourage new product development.
Class Action Reform

Class actions, brought on behalf of multiple plaintiffs, each with a relatively small claim, can result in huge judgments against businesses awarded by sympathetic juries. Plaintiffs' lawyers routinely bring these cases in jurisdictions where juries have made excessive awards in past cases. This is known as "forum shopping." Often the result is a miniscule award to each individual plaintiff (sometimes resulting in a coupon for a discount on additional products or services purchased from the defendant company), but a huge windfall for the attorneys in the form of attorneys' fees.

To solve the problem of "forum shopping" and other related issues, Senator Nelson supported class action reform legislation in the Senate and was involved in the negotiations to produce a fair and workable bill which will give federal courts the responsibility for hearing large class action cases. After many years of debate on this issue, Congress passed the Class Action Fairness Act in 2005, which had broad bipartisan support. The bill addresses the most serious abuses of class actions by allowing more large, interstate class actions to be heard in federal courts and by implementing a "Consumer Class Action Bill of Rights" that aims to protect consumers from some of the abuses of class actions, such as minimal damage awards or coupons settlements.
Medical Liability Reform

In many areas of the nation, medical doctors, particularly those who practice in critical care areas such as obstetrics and neurosurgery, are facing large increases in the cost of medical malpractice insurance. Many of these physicians are leaving the practice of medicine because they simply cannot afford these increased premiums. Many small communities in Nebraska already have difficulty in keeping doctors, and escalating malpractice premiums only make the problem worse.

Nebraska 's Senator Ben Nelson is committed to finding a workable solution to escalating malpractice premiums by addressing the medical liability issue. Since 1976, Nebraska has had a statute which limits the amount an injured plaintiff can recover for his or her injury. As Nebraska's Director of Insurance at the time, Nelson was instrumental in crafting that statute and he believes that Nebraska's approach could be used as a national model.

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