Objecting to trial lawyers.

• Author: Mooneyham, Scott
• Position: CAPITALGOODS

More than any other profession, trial lawyers have been identified with Democrats. More than 90% of their political fundraising goes to that party, and the percentage might be higher in North Carolina. Last year, a political action committee controlled by North Carolina Advocates for Justice--a trial-lawyer group--doled out $204,000 to Democratic legislative caucuses. The state Republican Party got $1,000. The link is understandable. In civil suits, trial lawyers usually go up against business interests traditionally allied with the GOP.

But despite the riches such litigation has gained some of them, trial lawyers may have been among the biggest losers when Republicans won control of the state legislature in the last election. Members of the new majority in both houses quickly served notice they would wade into one of the trial lawyers' biggest markets--medical malpractice. Legislation working its way through the General Assembly would limit noneconomic damages, for things such as pain and suffering or disfigurement, and create higher negligence standards to sue emergency-room doctors. In addition to the bill, new Speaker Thorn Tillis has set up a special House committee to do nothing but focus on tort reform.

Hospitals and doctors, not surprisingly, are more than happy to see the Republican majority take on the trial lawyers. They've argued for years that North Carolina policymakers needed to do more to hold down liability-insurance rates, particularly for such specialists as obstetricians and neurosurgeons, who face the greatest exposure to lawsuits. Supporters says the damage caps will help bring down medical costs by reducing the practice of defensive medicine--physicians trying to protect themselves from possible legal action by ordering more tests than needed--and by attracting more doctors to what will be a more doctor-friendly state. "I think this will help bring stability to the insurance market," says Sen. Tom Apodaca of Hendersonville. One of the sponsors of the damage-cap bill, he and his Republican colleagues like to point to Texas as an example of the good that can come from damage caps.

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Voters there approved an amendment to their state constitution in 2003 to limit the amounts of medical-malpractice awards. Eighteen months later, the number of malpractice cases filed had dropped by half, the number of doctors practicing and insurers doing business in the state had increased, and insurance rates had...