Lawyers USA Your Business Partner

WASHINGTON – Now that the debate over health care reform legislation that has dominated the attention of Washington lawmakers appears to be coming to a conclusion, advocates for attorney-related legislation say they hope lawmakers restart the engines on the bills that have stalled in the process.

Despite heavy efforts by attorney groups to push for passage of a host of measures that would affect everything from pleading standards in federal courts to the types of discrimination claims workers can bring to the taxation of pain and suffering damage awards, those bills have languished as lawmakers engaged in the increasingly bitter battle over health care reform.

“We have encountered the same roadblock that every other group has encountered this year,” said Ray De Lorenzi, spokesman for the American Association for Justice (AAJ), the nation’s largest group of trial lawyers. “Health care has sucked up a lot of the oxygen.”

The growing partisan rancor on Capitol Hill has also played a role in the slow progress of not only bills affecting lawyers, but all legislation, said some members of the legal lobby.

“The focus on the health care debate, as well as the unprecedented obstructionism of the minority in the Senate, has made it difficult for any bills to move forward,” said Donna R. Lenhoff, legislative and public policy director for the National Employment Lawyers Association (NELA) in Washington.

De Lorenzi said he was confident that the end of the health care debate will mean positive action on the AAJ-backed legislation in Congress.

“There is a real feeling that we need increased accountability,” he said. “The issues that we are working on fit that mold.”

Lenhoff agreed.

“All you can do is keep moving,” she said of NELA-backed measures. “When the opportunity is there, I think we will have the attention of leadership [in the House and Senate] and the administration, and hopefully there can be some movement.”

Many measures stalled

As the health care debate raged, then fizzled and then raged again, most of the items on the legislative agendas of legal groups like AAJ and NELA have had to take a back seat.

Here’s a look at some of the key measures that have stalled:

• The Medical Device Safety Act (H.R. 1346, S. 540) has seen little action in either house of Congress since being introduced last year. It would overturn Riegel v. Medtronic and allow patients to bring suit in state court against makers of faulty medical devices.

• The Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act (H.R. 3721, S. 1756), which would overturn the Supreme Court’s ruling in Gross v. FBL Financial Services that eliminated mixed-motive disparate-treatment claims under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, also sits in committee in both houses.

• The Notice Pleading Restoration Act of 2009 (S. 1504) has seen little movement since being introduced by Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., in July. That measure would restore the “notice pleading” standard and overturn Supreme Court cases requiring plaintiffs to put enough facts in a complaint to establish a “plausible” claim in order to withstand a challenge by the defense.

• The Civil Rights Tax Relief Act (H.R. 3035, S. 1360) would exclude noneconomic damages obtained in civil rights and other employment cases from taxable gross income. The legislation was referred to committee in the House and Senate last year and has since seen no action.

• The Foreign Manufacturers Legal Accountability Act of 2010 would make it easier for U.S. consumers to sue foreign manufacturers of defective products – such as the controversial Chinese-manufactured drywall – by making service of process in the United States easier. The House version of the bill was referred to committee in February and the Senate version went to committee back in August.

• The Permanent Estate Tax Relief for Families, Farmers and Small Businesses Act (H.R. 4532), which would restore the now-repealed estate tax to 2090 levels with a $3.5 million exemption, was passed in the House, but has stalled in the Senate.

Some slow movement

Despite the backlog, there has been positive movement on some bills.

For example, the defense spending law included a NELA and AAJ-backed amendment that bans defense contractors from enforcing mandatory pre-dispute arbitration clauses for claims of sexual assault, harassment or Title VII violations.

The amendment, sponsored by Sens. Al Franken, D-Minn. and Mary Landrieu, D-La., was inspired by the legal fight of Jamie Leigh Jones, a former Halliburton employee who won a 5th Circuit ruling allowing her tort suit alleging she was raped in her quarters by colleagues while working in Baghdad to proceed. The bill was signed into law by President Barack Obama in December.

“We were very active on that bill,” De Lorenzi said.

The amendment “affects a large swath of the workforce since it covers those who do defense contracting,” said Lenhoff. “That’s a lot of cases. [And] 10 Republicans voted for that measure as well as all the Democrats – and that is really unusual in these times.”

But despite that measure being signed into law, greater arbitration reform sought by attorneys in the form of the Arbitration Fairness Act of 2009 (H.R. 1020, S. 931) has yet to be passed. That bill, which would bar mandatory pre-dispute arbitration in most contracts including those in the consumer and employment contexts, sits in committee in both the House and the Senate.

Another measure that was signed into law by Obama in February was the Social Security Disability Applicant’s Access to Professional Representation Act of 2010, which allows attorneys who represent Social Security disability claimants to have their fees withheld from the claimant’s past-due benefits and paid directly to the attorneys.

Lawmakers have vowed action on the Paycheck Fairness Act, H.R. 12, which would treat gender-based employment discrimination complaints involving pay in the same manner as race, disability and age discrimination claims. The measure passed in the House and is now pending in committee in the Senate. During a recent hearing on the bill, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions vowed the measure would go to a vote.

The House also passed the Food Safety Enhancement Act, H.R. 2749, which would give the FDA greater regulatory powers over the national food supply and food providers with the goal of preventing food-borne illnesses and ensuring food safety. That bill now also sits in the Senate HELP Committee.

Questions or comments can be directed to the writer at: kimberly.atkins@lawyersusaonline.com

Close this Window Bookmark and Share This Page

Save to Browser Favorites / Bookmarks

Print RSS Feed Ask backflip blinklist BlogBookmark Bloglines BlogMarks Blogsvine BuddyMarks BUMPzee! CiteULike co.mments

Connotea del.icio.us Digg diigo DotNetKicks DropJack dzone Facebook Fark Faves Feed Me Links Friendsite folkd.com

Furl Google Hugg Jeqq Kaboodle kirtsy linkaGoGo linkedin LinksMarker Ma.gnolia Mister Wong Mixx MySpace

MyWeb Netvouz Newsvine oneview OnlyWire PlugIM Propeller Reddit Rojo Segnalo Shoutwire Simpy Slashdot

Sphere Sphinn Spurl Squidoo StumbleUpon Technorati ThisNext Tumblr Twitter Webride Windows Live Yahoo!

Email This to a Friend

Copy HTML: 

 If you like this then please subscribe to the RSS Feed.

More »