(Georgia Recorder) – With fewer than 10 legislative days to go until the gavel falls to send state lawmakers home on April 4, pressure is mounting on both sides of the fight over the future of Georgia’s civil litigation landscape.
Although Senate Bill 68, the omnibus lawsuit overhaul bill backed by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, passed quickly through the state Senate, it has languished in the House Rules Subcommittee on Lawsuit Reform, a sign that the bill’s proponents in the House are still working to gain the support needed to ensure its passage.
The special subcommittee has held four separate hearings on the bill over the past two weeks, each featuring hours of public testimony, but lawmakers adjourned Wednesday without voting on the legislation. A companion bill with more bipartisan support, Senate Bill 69, has yet to be heard in the committee.
And as the end of session draws nearer, both supporters and opponents of the bill are getting organized, sending letters to lawmakers, providing testimony in committee and holding press conferences at the Georgia Capitol in an effort to plead their case to state lawmakers.
At a Thursday morning press conference held on the north steps of the Capitol building — a prominent location usually reserved solely through the governor’s office — business executives from across Georgia gathered to trumpet their support for the bill. Representatives spanning industries like manufacturing, agriculture, health care and trucking spoke about the growing cost of doing business in Georgia, arguing that large jury settlements and baseless lawsuits were leading to inflated insurance premiums that threatened their prosperity.
“Georgia’s trucking companies are being run off of the proverbial road by Georgia’s imbalanced civil justice system,” said Charles Tarbutton, the president and CEO of the Sandersville-based trucking company B-H Transfer, adding that his company was currently facing a dozen lawsuits.
“I’ve heard many times over the last several weeks, ‘this is really about big corporations versus the little guy,’” Tarbutton continued. “I urge the members of the House to reject that fallacy. I speak on behalf of those 75,000 truck drivers in Georgia. We are the little guys.”
Kemp has previously argued that sweeping policy changes are needed to bring down insurance costs for businesses throughout the state, vowing to bring back lawmakers for a special session if he felt they came up short in delivering “meaningful, impactful” changes. A top Kemp aide also appeared on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Politically Georgia talk show before the bill appeared on the Senate floor, threatening to use the governor’s substantial leadership committee campaign war chest to back primary challengers for any Republicans who voted against the bill or supported “unfriendly amendments.”
But at a second press conference Thursday, held later that same day on the opposite side of the building, members of the growing opposition to SB 68 voiced their objections, arguing that the legislation would restrict survivors of sexual assault and human trafficking from being able to hold bad actors accountable.
“Noticing and acting are two very different things,” said Michael Rosemary, a human trafficking survivor and activist who said hotel employees actively ignored the abuse she endured at the hands of her pimp.
Hotels like the one where she was abused, she added, “were complicit, and that makes them responsible. This bill would allow these very businesses to walk away without any consequences. It would take away one of the only forms of justice survivors have left: The ability to hold these businesses that enabled our abuse accountable.”
Victims’ advocates also raised concern about a provision that would allow trials to be bifurcated, or split into multiple stages, arguing that it would be retraumatizing for survivors of violence and abuse to have to provide testimony multiple times. They also urged lawmakers to add an amendment to the bill that would carve out a few exemptions for survivors of sexual abuse and human trafficking, as well as for children and elderly plaintiffs.
Despite the uncertainty, House Speaker Jon Burns, a Newington Republican, said he expects to see a vote on the bill in a committee meeting next week.
“We’re doing exactly what we said we would do,” Burns said when asked about the delay in passing SB 68. “We do what the House does when a bill comes over from the Senate: we’re speaking to the Senate, we’re speaking to the governor. We’re ensuring that we have all the information on the table.”
