JACKSON - When the Mississippi Economic Council's Blake Wilson last week challenged a spokesman for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on ETV's "Statewide Live" to name one business that had left the state because of the state's allegedly flawed civil justice system, he couldn't do it.
Yet the U.S. Chamber is beating up on the economically strapped state of Mississippi in full-page ads as though it is the worst place in the country to do business because of runaway jury verdicts and the state's failure to enact laws to halt them.
"Businesses are quitting the state, because of the legal climate," the Chamber's high-rolling president, Tom Donohue, had claimed in a Washington news conference when he announced the Mississippi ad blitz. (Donohue, the Wall Street Journal says, was the architect of the Chamber's $5 million 2000 incursion into judicial elections in Mississippi and three other states.)
A day later, when his spokesman, Jim Wootton, weighed in by phone during the Mississippi ETV panel program to discuss the Chamber ads as well as the state's tort reform debate, he couldn't come up with the name of any business that had left the state over tort reform.
The Chamber contends in its ads that because the Legislature has not reformed the tort system, since 1995 at least 16 jury awards have topped $9 million and awards have totaled more than $1.8 billion. The system has cost the state thousands of jobs, it says.
Mind you, Blake Wilson, who challenged the Chamber spokesman's assertions, represents Mississippi business interests. His organization is the equivalent of the state chamber of commerce. He's not spokesman for those pesky trial lawyers, the Chamber's perennial nemesis on the issue of tort reform.
But Wilson believes the huge Washington-based lobby was way off base making it appear that Mississippi's business climate was "worse than other states" because of its civil justice system.
"Granted, we need to bring the situation into balance," he said, but he quickly adds that tort reform (which he supports) is "just one of the things we need to deal with for economic development. We, for example, also need to improve education and job training."
Wilson contends the battle between pro- and anti-tort reform interests in Mississippi has "deteriorated into one of a huge lobby on one hand and a bit of denial on the other." He added, "The time has come for dialogue … I think there is room for compromise in all areas."
At least one member of Mississippi's medical profession, which, as a group, has been the most strident, visible advocates of tort reform legislation, shares Wilson's views that the time has come for warring sides on the tort issue to sit down at the peace table.
He is Dr. David L. Merideth, who is unusually qualified to see the tort issue from both sides of the table. Besides being a doctor of medicine who has practiced for 15 years - most of it in Greenville - he is also a lawyer. Often he is on the plaintiff's side. His practice, he said, is "medical/law, not dependent entirely on either profession."
Merideth joined the 300 white-coated doctors and health-care givers who descended on the state Capitol one day last January to button-hole lawmakers. The doctor march was dramatizing the need for action on a pack of tort bills. Essentially, they would put a cap on non-economic monetary awards and eliminate punitive damages.
But Merideth didn't share the unquestioning allegiance medics displayed that day to the proposition that a malfunctioning tort system is the main cause of their soaring medical malpractice insurance rates.
"I firmly believe it is the business, specifically the insurance companies, that are the problem and not the civil justice system," he said. "Very few doctors have any idea of their company's financial statement, its investment portfolio," he added. "They don't demand that the insurer justify any increase in their premium rates."
A number of medical insurance companies, Merideth contends, have gotten into financial trouble because of their losses in the stock market, "and are shifting it to the backs of doctors."
The former Greenvillian (whose father is legendary former legislator H. L. "Sonny" Merideth) watches closely the financial reports of his own insurer, Medical Assurance Company of Mississippi, which is run by Mississippi doctors. He waves a document showing MACM made a profit of $7 million last year (in which doctor members share). "But," he adds, "their rates also are too high."
Interestingly, contrary to the civil justice picture painted by the U.S. Chamber and the State Medical Association, MACM reported in its own year-end statement that in 11 court cases in which it defended physicians in 2000, "only one case resulted in a verdict for the plaintiff."
Merideth and trial lawyer association President Shane Langston of Jackson agree that the U.S. Chamber ad cited grossly misleading cases in the asserted total of $1.8 billion in awards over the past six years.
"The chamber's total included some cases of doctors suing doctors, and one $500 million verdict of one funeral home company suing another, and of course the $474 million verdict won by the Mississippi State Tax Commission against a computer software company for non-compliance on its contract with the state."
Langston adds that "they also fail to say that many of the original awards were later substantially reduced, for instance by two-thirds in both the state Tax Commission and funeral home cases."
The U.S. Chamber and other leading tort-reform advocates broadly imply that many of the biggest jury awards have been in Jefferson and Holmes counties, both of which are predominantly black.
"Does that mean African-Americans should be excluded from juries?" Langston had asked Wootton on the ETV "Statewide Live" program. "Of course not," the Chamber guy responded.
Some note, however, that the largest recent malpractice case to be affirmed by the Mississippi Supreme Court was a $9 million award against the Rankin County Medical Center, located in a conservative, white-majority county that is a stronghold of the state GOP.
Merideth has sought to get peace talks going between the medical and legal professions over the issue with little response from his fellow doctors. "I wrote to Dr. Hugh Gamble (president of the State Medical Association) whom I used to practice medicine alongside in Greenville that we should get the sides together, and I've heard nothing from him."
Both the MEC's Wilson and doctor/lawyer Merideth believe some independent third party must study the state's tort problem and recommend a solution. Both say the first step is to acknowledge there is a problem, "then get help to solve it."
Merideth adds: "It's not going to be done down on the front steps of the state Capitol, nor do we need a bully such as the U.S. Chamber to help us find a solution."
