Legislative Lobbying

The Civil Justice Association of California’s staff lobbyist-lawyers aggressively bring to the Legislature sound legal reform arguments and lead coalitions to defeat personal injury lawyer-backed bills.

Our proposals strive for increased fairness and efficiency in the civil justice system. We aim to reduce the kind of litigation that pads lawyers’ pockets but brings nothing of value to the clients or the public.

We work in Sacramento to pass bills that restrain excessive punitive damages, reduce expensive employment litigation, reduce wasteful construction lawsuits, and head off the type of asbestos litigation that has become an attorney fee-machine in other states. We promote swifter resolution of lawsuits and the early elimination of meritless lawsuits.

We show the Governor and the Legislature that the trial lawyer agenda is not in the interest of people who depend upon a healthy state economy.

We have stopped trial lawyer bills to eliminate the privacy protection of material collected in a lawsuit and never used at trial. We stopped their efforts to pass bounty-hunter statutes that let them sue and collect attorney fees — even when they haven’t a legitimate client.

We are countering their attempt to destroy arbitration agreements, undermine medical malpractice law reforms, expand litigation against health care, and open companies to increased litigation in areas of employment, securities, and anti-trust law.

Our Legislative Program laid the basis for the drafting and campaign culminating in landmark business liability reform in 2004 — the passage of Proposition 64.