State legislatures use damage caps and filing deadlines to overturn court-made doctrines

Evidence

Even more important were so-called tort reform initiatives undertaken by state legislatures. Since the 1980s, legislatures in every state have enacted statutes to modify or overturn common-law doctrines enunciated by state courts. Thirty-two states established caps on punitive damages, and 23 on damages for noneconomic injuries such as pain and suffering. Some states discouraged suits through statutes of limitation that required that suits be filed within a set period after an injury was suffered. Others did so through statutes of repose. Utah, for example, barred product liability claims 6 years after purchase or 10 years after manufacture. Finally, some states sought to discourage litigation by placing limits on attorneys’ continent fees or by imposing sanctions on attorneys who filed frivolous suits. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 3530

Categorization

• XREF: Concrete illustration of legislative checks on judicial policymaking, the core mechanism of this chapter and of the course’s separation-of-powers unit.