Pennsylvania: Model for Commonsense Tort Reforms?

With its medical liability reforms last decade, enactment of the Fair Share Act last year and judicial reform of Philadelphia’s plaintiff-friendly Complex Litigation Center earlier this year, ATRA counsel Mark Behrens makes the case that Pennsylvania could become the model for commonsense state tort reforms.

But Behrens’ op-ed in Sunday’s Philadelphia Inquirer urges Pennsylvania policymakers to go further, by adopting venue refom, too.   

“Other states have adopted broad venue reforms over the last decade,” he writes.  “Pennsylvania should join them. The success of medical liability reform shows that progress is possible. Adoption of venue reform for other civil actions would refocus litigation on the commonwealth’s citizens and relieve them of the burden of serving on juries in cases that belong elsewhere.

“The Keystone State should demonstrate to job creators that it is willing to make its legal climate more competitive with other states and show that Pennsylvania is ‘open for business.'”