re: Tort reform in Louisiana - you can only choose 3

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The court would decide an acceptable hourly comp fee.

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You mean the same court that is currently owned by the Plaintiff’s bar?

It’s the way the fee agreement is written that matters. To get a case to trial, you’re probably looking at roughly 1500 billable hours for a jury trial, and that’s conservatively speaking. That’s $375,000 at an average billing rate of $250 per hr. And that is NOT including costs to try the case, which can be $40-$50k if liability is contested. And that’s on the low end. All those hrs lawyers spend, you have doctors, engineers, accountants and Phds - who can charge double that per hour. What’s your hourly rate to provide a depo, for example? Most docs around here charge in the $2500 range to testify for an hour. I’ve had them leave the room once the hour is up.

That means if a plaintiff wins, and recovers $375,000, the plaintiff recovers an additional $375,000 plus all his costs. So now, judgment value is $750k, plus the insurer or paying defendant is out his own $375k in atty fees and his own expert expenses.

Plus, plaintiff’s atty has a fee agreement which stipulates he gets 40 percent of everything recovered, plus expenses.

So, on a $750k judgment plaintiff’s atty collects a fee of $300,000, plus expenses.

If the case would have been without a “loser pays” statute, plaintiff collects $375k and his lawyer gets $150k. The plaintiff’s lawyer has to reimburse medical expenses etc, so the plaintiff probably nets $75-$100k depending on the extent of treatment. Mind you, I’m just considering what it costs, low end to get a $375k judgment to trial. The last PI case I tried on defense, I considered a $400k verdict a win. When I obtained it, Gordon Mckeron’s office heard about it and called me to try to hire me bc if I could get a jury to provide that amount with 2 back surgeries and an at fault driver, he wanted me to know that I could make way more money if I just moved to the dark side. I had Stipulated to liability and knew we would have to pay - my entire goal was to just hold plaintiff to a field goal.

By doing a loser pays situation- You have now increased judgment value by the amount of attorneys fees which who TF knows what that is and how can you be sure when you’re just negotiating. I would estimate that 90 percent of cases settle without trial. So, You’ve just added six figures worth of attorney fees to the top of settlement value, if the case settles before trial.

It would increase settlement values, the cost of litigation, and the risk to civil defendants.

It’s a bad idea.