Roosevelt was immensely popular in Ohio, and in 1912 was amid his second presidential bid – as a Progressive, not, as before, a Republican. TR didn’t carry Ohio in 1912. But pluralities in eight counties did back him: Ashtabula, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Medina, Trumbull, Fulton (Wauseon) and Gallia (Gallipolis).
Roosevelt, at the Statehouse, cataloged the sordid list of big-business abuses notably fat-cats’ opposition to workers’ compensation and, indirectly, personal-injury lawsuits:
“I ask you not to think of ... mere legal formalism.” TR thundered in the Ohio House chamber, “but ... to ponder what it means to men dependent for their livelihood, and to the women and children dependent upon [them], when the courts ... deny them the justice to which they are entitled.”
(Unions and common-sense business leaders won Ohio’s battle for workers’ compensation.)
But, like cicadas, lobbyists periodically emerge on Capitol Square to undercut a parallel protection for everyday Ohioans suffering from personal injuries, the Ohio Bill of Rights’ promise that every Ohioan – rich or poor – should have “for an injury done him in his land, goods, person, or reputation ... remedy by due course of law, and ... justice administered without denial or delay.”
But in 2004 the legislature passed a “reform” sponsored by then-state Sen. Steve Stivers, an Upper Arlington Republican later in Congress. Ohio’s Supreme Court used that 2004 bill to hammer down damages a jury awarded a 15-year-old parishioner for “forced oral and vaginal intercourse” inflicted on her by a then-senior pastor at Grace Brethren Church of Delaware.
The jury awarded her $3.65 million; of that, $3.5 million represented “pain and suffering ... mental anguish, and any other intangible loss.” But thanks to Stivers’ 2004 law, Ohio’s Supreme Court cut — to $500,000 — the victim’s damages. despite what a jury of her fellow Ohioans had ordered.
(No, Stivers isn’t necessarily a mossback: In 2003-04, as a state senator, he courageously voted “no” on a bill banning same-sex marriages in Ohio, which then-Gov. Bob Taft shamefully signed.)
This session, pro-business lobbies, spearheaded by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce – whose president happens to be Stivers – wants to block HB 447. At its core, legislative analysts said, the bill “increases the amount of ... damages recoverable for noneconomic loss ... in a tort action, or a civil action upon a (medical malpractice case), from a minimum of $250,000 to $415,000 and from a maximum of $350,000 to $580,000 for each plaintiff” ... and requires adjusting those amounts (presumably, upward) in accord with the Consumer Price Index.
The bill’s sponsor is Rep. Brian Stewart, of Pickaway County’s Ashville, a nominally conservative lawyer who appears to be in the entourage of GOP House Speaker Matt Huffman, of Lima, also a lawyer, maybe boosting the Stewart bill’s prospects. (Lawyers’ fees in personal injury cases are typically a percentage of the damages a client wins.)
The chamber said that for years Ohio “policymakers have worked to build a predictable, pro-growth environment ... HB 447 would undermine that progress by driving up costs for employers, increasing car and home insurance rates for Ohioans, and destabilizing our legal system.”
Oh, so that’s why the last time Ohioans’ per capita personal incomes matched or bested the nation’s was ... in 1969.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. You can reach him at tsuddes@gmail.com.
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