Lawsuit reform is The Texas Trucking Association’s top issue this legislative session

PHARR, Texas – William Nelson, the Texas Trucking Association’s director of membership, says the group’s top agenda item for the 89th Legislature is tort reform.

Nelson spoke at a recent Bridge Connect session hosted by the Pharr Bridge Board. It was held at the Pharr Development and Research Center. 

“Our primary mission is to be the unified voice for trucking within the state. If it’s good or bad for your business, we want to make sure that we carry that message to our legislators on Capitol Hill and in Austin and to make sure they’re listening to us,” Nelson said, in his opening remarks.

“Our legislative session just started this week. I believe it just started on the 14th. We’ve already seen a lot of action. A lot of bills have been proposed, and the TxTA will be monitoring all of them in order to make sure that we can get that information out to our membership and be that unified voice, get that information back. This is a good idea. This is a bad idea, etc.”

Nelson then explained what the top issue is for TxTA.

“The primary focus for the TxTA this session is going to be lawsuit reform. Tort reform is another term for it. We’ve seen in the past couple of years, insurance rates for your businesses increase 200%, drastically, and that’s making it very difficult for a lot of these businesses to operate in Texas. It’s not something we want,” Nelson said. 

“Big focuses for lawsuit reform really come down to making sure that damages are appropriate and follow appropriate resources. We’re seeing medical costs from medical claims from accidents that are eight to ten times what you would go to your standard doctor for, for a broken arm.

“We think that there are, how would I call it, potentially private investors, people who give a lawyer this money and say, hey, look, we have to sue for this amount so that I can have that return on that investment. We don’t want our legislative system to be a place for profit, right? We want it to be a place for justice.”

Nelson also spoke about overweight corridors, a hot topic for truckers in the Rio Grande Valley at the moment. 

Here is a video recording of William Nelson’s presentation at the Pharr Bridge Connect session:

Source: https://riograndeguardian.com/nelson-lawsuit-reform-is-the-texas-trucking-association-top-issue-this-legislative-session/