No time for malpractice bill

Senate panel adjourns before Norris can present legislation

By Daniel Connolly, Commercial Appeal
March 21, 2007

A Tennessee legislative committee ran out of time Tuesday to consider a bill to tighten the state's medical malpractice laws.

As a meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee continued late Tuesday afternoon, the bill's sponsor, Sen. Mark Norris, R-Collierville, said he was ready to present the bill, but doubted there would be time.

"I bet we don't get to it today," he said. "But more time is always a good thing." The committee adjourned a few minutes later.

Earlier this month, Norris twice withdrew the bill to help reach consensus as interest groups continued to wrangle over details.

Any change in medical malpractice laws could have a large impact on patients, doctors and attorneys in Tennessee.

In recent years, doctors have pressed for measures to make it harder to sue health care workers for medical mistakes and to limit damages when patients win. They argue that lawsuits create difficult working conditions for doctors and make health care less accessible for patients.

Trial attorneys have opposed such measures, arguing that the threat of lawsuits helps protect patients.

This year, state legislators have said that interested parties are close to a compromise that drops an item that doctors have long called for: a $250,000 cap on noneconomic damages such as pain and suffering.

Instead, the bill would aim to limit unfounded lawsuits through several measures, including requiring that attorneys sign a certificate of good faith that a lawsuit has merit. The attorney could be fined if the claim was later found to lack merit.

Interest groups debated changes in the text of the bill through much of the day Tuesday.

Mary Littleton, a lobbyist for the Tennessee Trial Lawyers Association, said Tuesday that she hadn't seen the latest version.

"It's kind of like waiting on the white smoke from the Vatican," she said.

Though physicians' groups have argued that medical malpractice suits are leading to high insurance rates for doctors and could drive them out of Tennessee, some academic studies dispute that.