2025 Legislative outlook: Reforming legal system abuse

Record date: 12/13/24
Air date: 01/15/25

Discover the staggering costs of the U.S. tort system and its impact on businesses and households. Join Deirdre Manna, Senior Vice President, Head of Government and Regulatory Relations Zurich North America and Adam Shores, Senior Vice President, State Government Relations, American Property Casualty Insurance Association, as they delve into social inflation on Zurich North America's "Future of Risk" podcast. Learn about legal system abuse, the role of plaintiff attorney tactics, and how these issues drive up insurance costs, strain the economy, and affect everyday consumers.

In this miniseries, the upcoming episodes include:

January 29: Third-party litigation

February 12: Nuclear verdicts

February 26: The role of claims fraud

March 12: Litigation funding

March 26: Plaintiff tactics

Guests: 

Adam Shores
Senior Vice President, State Government Relations
American Property Casualty Insurance Association

Adam Shores is senior vice president for state government relations for the American Property Casualty Insurance Association (APCIA), where he leads the organization’s state government relations and advocacy efforts. In this capacity, he advocates for public policy solutions benefiting insurance consumers and member companies. He also leads APCIA’s state political strategy, including managing the organization’s corporate PAC priorities and political engagement efforts.
Prior to joining APCIA, he spent nearly 15 years with Allstate Insurance Company where he directed strategic advocacy programs on several key public policy priorities.

Throughout his career, he has developed extensive experience in government relations, political engagement and public affairs in both the public and private sectors. He has been on the forefront of many insurance-related legislative initiatives and has extensive experience in grassroots engagement, issue advocacy and PAC management.

Prior to joining Allstate, he used his talents as a strategist and communicator in various roles while serving as a speechwriter in the administration of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush; a regional media director for the National Federation of Independent Business; a spokesman for the Florida Department of Education; and a legislative analyst in the Florida Senate Majority Office.

Shores holds a Bachelor of Science in Politics and Journalism from Troy University, and a Master of Professional Studies in Political Management from The George Washington University. He previously served as a member of his city council and presently resides in Libertyville, Illinois.

Deirdre Manna
Senior Vice President, Head of Government and Regulatory Relations
Zurich North America

Deirdre Manna is the Senior Vice President, Head of Government & Regulatory Relations for Zurich North America (ZNA) where she develops and advances state and federal public policy initiatives that align with the business priorities of ZNA (including Canada). Deirdre also is also responsible for oversight of ZNA’s regulatory affairs strategy including National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Deirdre leads the state and federal teams including managing professionals in Washington, D.C. and oversees the political operation including the Zurich Political Action Committee (Z-PAC). 

Manna joined Zurich in July 2018 and has over 25 years of regulatory and political engagement experience. She came to Zurich from the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI) where she served as Political Engagement and Regulatory Affairs Vice President. There she led PCI’s political engagement division and managed regulatory and industry affairs throughout the country for the association.

Manna is a former state insurance regulator, having served as acting Director of the Illinois Division of Insurance. She also served as Assistant Vice President of the American Insurance Association and as a government relations professional for a prominent national law firm.

Host:

Al Orendorff
Chief Communications Officer
Zurich North America

Al Orendorff is Chief Communications Officer at Zurich North America, where he is a member of Chief Executive Officer Kristof Terryn’s senior leadership team. He previously held communications leadership positions at Allstate Insurance, Aon Corp., Genworth Financial and Choose Chicago.

Orendorff began his career as a journalist working in television and radio news, including stints at NBC-TV in Peoria, Illinois, Black Entertainment Television, and WBEZ and WGN radio in Chicago. He is based in Chicago.

(PLEASE NOTE: This is an edited podcast transcript, capturing speakers with natural speech patterns that may include incomplete sentences and/or asides, grammatical errors, verbal shorthand and some statements that may be less clear in print.)

Episode transcript:

AL ORENDORFF: 529 billion dollars—that's billion with a ‘B’—

As of 2022, that's how much the tort system costs the U.S. economy every year. That's according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform. That's over $4,200 per U.S. household, but we're starting to see this number come down¹. That's what we're going to be talking about today.

Welcome to the Future of Risk, presented by Zurich North America. We explore the changing risk and resilience landscape and share insights on the challenges that face businesses to help you meet tomorrow prepared.

We're kicking off this year with our new podcast miniseries focusing on social inflation. The term social inflation refers to the rising costs of insurance claims and litigation expense beyond general economic inflation. These costs are driven by societal factors rather than traditional market forces. Those things contributing to these rising costs include social attitudes, legal practices, legal system abuse and cultural norms.

Now, the impact goes beyond the insurance industry. In addition to higher insurance premiums for businesses, it also puts a strain on the economy and adds growing financial pressures on everyday consumers. Today, in our first episode, we'll take a deeper look into the legislative outlook across the U.S., and its broader impact.

I'm Al Orendorff, and today I am speaking with Deirdre Manna, Head of Government and, and Regulatory Relations at Zurich North America and Adam Shores, Senior Vice President, State Government Relations at the American Property Casualty Insurance Association. Deirdre and Adam, welcome to the podcast.

ADAM SHORES: Thanks Al. Great to be here.

DEIRDRE MANNA: Thanks, Al.

ORENDORFF: Great to have you. This podcast series is about the larger issue of social inflation, but legal system abuse is a contributor. Deirdre, can you define ‘legal system abuse,’ what it is and how did we get here?

MANNA: Thanks, Al. That's a great way to kick this off. I think that a lot of people don't really understand what it is exactly, and how do we define that? How do we define legal system abuse? And basically, what is taking place is that we're seeing larger settlement and payouts and jury verdicts placed on our customers and companies to the plaintiffs.

So, we'll see a lawsuit and it can either be arbitrated or it can be considered by a jury, or it can be a settlement negotiation. And what we're seeing is the payments that come out are growing and growing and growing.

And why is that? There are a lot of reasons why, and we define it as legal system abuse. There are a lot of state laws and judicial rules and elections, plaintiff attorney tactics, these are all items that are inflating legal awards.

So, when you look at what happened in the ‘90s, how did we get here? There were a lot of laws passed. We called that, at the time, ‘tort reform.’ Now we refer to it more as ‘legal system abuse.’ But we had a lot of reforms in the ‘90s… they have all been eroded.

What we've seen is a continual increase. How did they get eroded? The states passed new laws. The juries started considering larger verdicts for plaintiffs. There were elections where pro-plaintiff lawmakers were elected, and they passed laws that really were unfair to one side.

So, we've seen this erosion. We've also seen a general societal trend of ‘David versus Goliath,’ where corporations are considered ‘Goliath,’ and juries and judges are very sympathetic to David, and therefore they tend to award the plaintiffs more.

We think victims should be paid what they are owed, but what we've seen is this inflation, and these really large judgements going out against companies. What that leads to is exactly the stats that you've talked about at the beginning, Al, where it's costing all of us. People don't understand that this isn't free, that these awards cost everyday people. I like the stat you used of 4,200 per household. But, you know, there's no silver bullet.

So, the reforms that we're talking about… there's nothing at the federal level. There's a few things at the federal level I should say, but most of it, it's a state-by-state game. It's a long-term game. So that's what we're looking at to combat legal system abuse.

ORENDORFF: You can't look at any one thing as the reason for this, and so you're not going to be able to look at any one thing as the solution for this issue. Correct?

MANNA: Correct. That's exactly right.

ORENDORFF: Adam, what are your thoughts about some of the pressures that have led to this place where we are right now?

SHORES: Yes, well thanks for the question, Al. I guess when we talk about legal system abuse, the one word that, of course, stands out to me, and that is the word ‘abuse.’ And that's really what's adding to these cost pressures for consumers and for businesses: the unadulterated gaming of the legal system and the abuse of the legal system by the trial bar, by financial investors who are seeking to, stack the deck in a way that presents unfairness for consumers.

That presents more cost pressure. You know, especially when we're in a time of heightened inflation overall gas costs more, groceries cost more, houses are more expensive if you can even find them. Cars cost more. So, all of those pressures are there already and consumers and businesses are dealing with those issues.

But then when you inject an abusive dynamic in the American legal system, whereby the desire to sort of add to financial awards or windfalls or look at that as a way to have a payout on the backs of businesses, on the backs of consumers, that cost goes up for everybody.

Al, you mentioned it; you talked about that average $4,300 [$4,200] per household cost, we call that the tort tax. That number fluctuates from state to state. But overall, when families sitting around the kitchen table are having to look at how to balance their budget, they now have to factor in those rising costs of what that means for them.

So, and how does that really play out? If a company is sued by a plaintiff and, an award or a judgment comes back against them, when those pile up over time, that that just adds to the bottom-line cost pressures for companies. That gets then translated down to consumers, and that's where that cost, or that tort tax comes into play. That's the real effect of what we see here is, at a time when people are struggling financially as it is, to have that challenge exacerbate that presents an even stronger difficulty for people.

ORENDORFF: Deirdre, you had mentioned briefly in our opening discussion about one of the things that was driving this is plaintiff's attorney trial tactics. I think that's worth a second look. What are some of the things that plaintiff's attorneys do that have exacerbated this issue?

MANNA: Yes, this is a question that we could spend the entire podcast on. There's about 10 top issues I would say. So, let me just break down a few of them. I'll break down three of them: venue shopping, third-party litigation funding and phantom damages.

First, on venue shopping, which is a common practice among trial lawyers. What they do is they pick the venue that is going to be most favorable to them for the outcome where there's a lot of legal system abuse. In fact, the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) just came out with their list of what ATRA has termed “judicial hellholes.” And what they did is they identified 10 areas that are very favorable to plaintiffs and very unfavorable to defendants.

What happens is trial lawyers use venue shopping. So, they don't go to the venue where the tort happened or where the accident took place or where the plaintiffs are or where the defenses is. They go and they shop and they find the best area for them to try their case. For example, the top judicial hellhole for this year identified by ATRA is Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. That gives you an example, you'll see an overload of the courts in that state and in that area, because it is more favorable.

The second area that I'll mention is third-party litigation funding. That is where we see hedge funds financing litigation. So, it's third parties who do not have any role in the actual case itself. They weren't injured, they aren't defending; they have money and they're funding the litigation.

Then what they do is they hold out for the highest amount and they take part of it back for themselves. We've seen some of these third-party litigation funders take back 95% of the settlement, meaning the plaintiff gets a very small amount. We've even had cases where the plaintiff has gotten zero, and the litigation funding firm gets the entire amount.

The last one I'll just mention is phantom damages, which is very popular as, as well. To define it, [phantom damages] exists anytime lawsuit recoveries are calculated using the dollar amount a patient was billed for medical service versus the amount that their insurer, Medicaid, Medicare, or workers’ comp actually paid for the treatment. So, those are just three examples of some of the tactics that are used and we're going to get more into what we're doing about to counter those later.

ORENDORFF: As you mentioned earlier, this exists, this problem exists, this issue exists on multiple levels. So, that is probably one of the things that makes it a challenge to combat, I would think.
Adam, speaking of complexities, this is something that might be difficult for some folks to get their head around. How do you… how do we position this issue in such a way that people can care?

SHORES: Great question. I think you have to do that both at the macro level and talk about what the overall impact of this problem is on the American economy, what the impact is on individual state economies. But then as I spoke to earlier, what does this mean for individual business owners who are trying to make ends meet, who are trying to grow in advance? What does it mean then for individual consumers who are trying to make a living and care for and protect their family?

I think just some of the key numbers that kind of stand out that really underscore what sort of challenge this is. Some of these are kind of in the abstract when you think about the billions of dollars. But when you look at how, the current abusive practices in the legal system have really framed the cost for the overall economy, a couple of points the U.S. Corporate legal spending on class actions is projected to be about $4 billion this year. That's billion with a ‘B.’

Deirdre mentioned the rise in nuclear verdicts and some of those issues that we see that just continuing to grow and grow. When you look at the top 100 verdicts in the country, they've increased about 350% from an average of about $64 million six years ago, to an average now of about $225 million.
So that's just an incredible amount of cost that is added to the system. And then when you look more at the individual case level and this, I think, goes back to 2020, but the median personal injury judgment about 10 years ago was about $49,000. Today it's about $125,000 or in 2020 is about 125,000. So, those are real world examples are real dollars that we're seeing.

Then what adds to that ¬—we haven't really talked about this yet— is what happens outside of the courtroom, which is the practice of attorney advertising, where the trial bar sort of positions itself as the champion of consumers. We all see the billboards, we all see the commercials on TV; they're nonstop, they're incessant. In fact, I was joking earlier. It was like, can we just continue the election so that we can see less trial bar advertisements and more political advertisements?

So, it really underscores the problem that we have there. If you look at the rise in attorney advertising a few years ago, I think that number sketched out to be about $1.4 billion spent by attorneys on advertising. That's an investment that they're going to take every time. They're going to put money into that because they know they're going to get billions and billions out of it. We've got to shed some light on that as well and really put the position back on them and underscore what's their motivation.

Deirdre talked about third-party litigation funding. Those financiers, they are solely involved in that process for their own financial benefit. They purport to be there to support those who maybe can't file a suit and can't afford to go through that process at trial. They purport to help them, but they're really helping themselves and we see that with the trial attorneys themselves as well. They're advertising that they're going to be out there fighting for the consumers as well, they're not completely altruistic. They're fighting for their own financial wellbeing as well.

ORENDORFF: You know, I understand that both Zurich and the APCIA (American Property Casualty Insurance Association) are important players in a multi-industry coalition that is actively involved in efforts to change some state laws that make it hard to combat some of the abusive practices. How'd this coalition come about?

MANNA: Well, I'll kick this off, Adam, and then turn it over to you. But basically, what happened was the industry in and around 2019 started to kind of take a look at what we can do to these rising costs. What we can do about social inflation and legal system abuse as we were seeing our customers having to pay more for their rates.

So, we started around that time, and then COVID hit, and then we had to really turn our focus. There was a lot of bad legislation, a lot of harmful proposals and legislation and regulations that were coming out during COVID. So, we turned our focus to that.

Well, once that kind of died down, we went back to it and Zurich started the coalition. What we did is we started a claims organization because a lot of these problems are with the claims, and it was the first time anybody had really done that. They had taken their claims operation and kind of moved them in with the advocacy part or the GRR (Government & Regulatory Relations) part.

So, we started that division at Zurich, and then we started to build the coalition with our competitors, with our customers and with our brokers. Something that had never happened before, this type of coalition where we weren't doing it on our own. We weren't doing it with — what's some of the groups that have been out there for years — ATRA (American Tort Reform Association) and ILR (Institute for Legal Reform), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform, and we partnered with APCIA as well, and they took it as their priority issue.

So, we started reaching out to brokers and customers and we started to educate this coalition, to say here's the problem. Then we started to determine, along with our partners, including APCIA, where do we need to focus?

I think that's an important part of it, because as I said earlier, there's no “silver bullet.” There's not one law at the federal [level] that we can practice that's going to take care of legal system abuse. It's a state-by-state. It's also a long-term game and that's what everybody had to understand is that this isn't going to happen overnight. We need to build the coalition, tell our story, pass legislation, change regulations, and also look at what's going on in the courts with the court rules.

So, it's a very complicated strategy, but the coalition has grown tremendously. Every major insurance carrier is involved. All the major corporate Fortune 100 companies are either aware of it, are working on it, or have either joined.

Then what we've done is we've done a symposium every year—an in-person one. The first one was held at Zurich where we brought everybody in the room and then we've also done two virtual. We constantly communicate with this coalition when there's a bill out there, when there's action that they can take to help us address these issues.

ORENDORFF: It sounds like the coalition's existence, very existence, kind of underscores the point that you made earlier, that more and more people, more and more organizations are seeing this as the problem that it is.

MANNA: Exactly. We have, like I said, it's been tremendous support and interest and activity by this coalition in terms of addressing legal system abuse.

ORENDORFF: Now, Adam, are there certain states that we are focusing on?

SHORES: Yes. In fact, there are Al. Let me just say, this is the signature issue for APCIA and our members, and we're so proud to represent Zurich and partner with Zurich in that regard, along with the rest of our member companies who also equally see the challenges and feel those challenges with this and have invested time, money, effort, resource, not only among themselves. But to Deirdre's point, extending that network to your clients and your customers and the businesses that you work with, because they all have resources.

They're all feeling this. They've all got assets that can help tell this broad story. So, we have built out a priority strategy plan for the last couple of years to identify about a dozen or so key states where we really have identified opportunity areas for us to move the needle in a positive direction.

Many of those states are those judicial hell holes that Deirdre mentioned, and we're continuing that work in 2025 as well, where we've again identified top 12 or so states where we're focusing a lot of effort to either build on reforms that have already started or to entertain new opportunities with new legislators and new policy makers to talk about things.

So, some of those key states that come to mind are Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Nevada, Florida, where we built on, we built a number of successful reforms two years ago. Thanks, in large part to that coalition effort that Deirdre was talking about. Where we engaged business community leaders, the entire insurance industry around establishing some very meaningful reforms.

But now we know in Florida, we have to defend those reforms because the political tide has shifted a little bit where those who have control in the legislature are maybe interested in scaling back some of those efforts.

So now, we have to look at what we do to defend those. So, that's kind of one of the elements that's predicated in this strategy is looking at where do we have opportunities to have some positive impact and reform, but to be nimble enough to prepare for what we know the trial bar will do.

You know, they kind of took it on the chin in Florida, and now they're looking to extend their tentacles into other jurisdictions in other states. And so, we've got to be in a position and be prepared to protect consumers in those states as well. I could rattle off probably every state in the country, there's an opportunity for us to have a reform effort. But we've prioritized those to really focus on those key areas where we think we can have the most impact.

So, for example, in Georgia, we saw limited success last year with some key reforms in certain areas. Same thing in Louisiana where there was a newly elected governor, newly elected insurance commissioner. There were new faces in the Louisiana legislature, and we used that opportunity to move forward on things like third-party litigation, financing and other issues. There's more work to be done.

As Deirdre mentioned and alluded to, this is not just about passing a bill. This is a sustained effort with sustained involvement, continuing ongoing education, conversation, advocacy, all of our individual state planning efforts focus on that. Then it's sort of with that national umbrella of, how do we partner with broad organizations across the country to move the needle.

MANNA: Al, let me do a little bit of a deep dive, if that's okay, on Georgia and another state. I think Georgia is key. It's our top priority this year. We brought the coalition down there. We're working with the locals, which is very important when you go into a state to try to do these reforms that you're working with the locals.

So, we're working with the agents in Georgia and working with the Chamber of Commerce in Georgia. And what we're doing is proactive, we have states that are proactive and Georgia's one of them. It's the number one priority for our coalition for 2025. And Adam mentioned some of the reasons why we chose Georgia, and some of the issues that we're looking at are the ones that I talked about at the beginning. When you talk about third-party litigation funding, phantom damages is another issue, venue shopping.

Actually, going back to the ATRA, judicial hell hole, Georgia is number four on that list, so it's going to be a key state. We're also looking how we can, size up against the trial bar in terms of political muscle as well. That's a key piece of this too. I think when Adam mentioned Florida and being defensive.

I'll just throw out this that recently one of the key players in the Florida legislature just got $600,000 in political donations just in the last month. So that gives you an idea of what we're up against here. Then we also have our states that are deep defensive, and I'll do a little deep dive on Illinois.

Illinois, there's not a lot of opportunity there for proactiveness like we're seeing in Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Illinois, New York, California are defensive.

What's going on in Illinois is that we had a civil justice group there. It disbanded, it was weakened over the years, and we started a new one. And we've got the business community behind us in Illinois. We've got a lot of legislators behind us in Illinois and starting this civil justice group in Illinois. So, that's something that we're trying to get the coalition members to join Illinois.

But again, those are all defensive. So, we're looking at bills that are passing, using public affairs in the media to explain, so these bills aren't passed in a dark room at 3:00 a.m. in the morning during the lame-duck session as Illinois has done before. But bring some sunshine to it so that people know, again, back to some of the stats that you mentioned at the beginning, so that the general public knows that this is costing them and they can talk to their legislators about it, and we can stop a lot of the bad things that are happening in Illinois.

ORENDORFF: To an earlier point that Adam made reform is not a one-shot deal where you check the box and move on. It's kind of an ongoing concern which is something I think it's important for people to understand. Speaking of those reform efforts, what does passage of these types of reforms mean to businesses and consumers in the economy in general?

MANNA: Well, I think one area that we can talk about is Florida. Adam, we've touched on it a little bit. But [in] Florida, what happened was we passed the reforms in 2023, at the beginning of the legislative session with the governor's support, with the legislature support. They actually passed them, and the governor assigned it.

The governor was key in that victory. And we wanted to make sure that everybody understood, because there was so much effort put into this, that the results aren't instantaneous. So, what happened was, before the governor could even sign the bill, the trial lawyers filed 40,000 lawsuits in that time so they could get in with the old laws instead of the reforms that we passed, which is unbelievable. They must have had someone sitting at the courthouse just filing, filing, filing. I calculated that about—

ORENDORFF: [Did you] say 40,000? That's incredible.

MANNA: Yes, it was like 12—We did some kind of calculation; it was like 1,200 an hour if the courts were open 24 hours.

SHORES: That just speaks to their motivation right there, that very point right there. It's not about standing up for the little guy, it's about getting their shots in while they still have an opportunity to do it. And that just underscores the entire challenge that we have.

MANNA: But, now we are starting to see the results in Florida. We have a lot of stats that are showing that the number of the awards are going down in Florida. The number of cases are going down in Florida, and we are starting to see the results. But again, it's a long-term game too. So, we pass them in '23, we just started to see the results at the beginning of '24 and mid-'24.

So, we're starting to see those stats, which are important because we want the people not to lose motivation in these battles, not to lose motivation in the entire war, which is really what it is. And so that's helpful, getting out there and talking about these results, making people understand that it takes a while so that they'll continue to help in places like Louisiana and Georgia and see those results. So, getting those results out there is really important.

ORENDORFF: Adam, as we begin to kind of wrap up our conversation today, what can businesses do to get involved?

SHORES: Well, I think that's really a table stakes part of what this is. And I know Deirdre mentioned a lot about the coalition effort, and I think that's really one of the primary ways. So, businesses who are so inclined to be engaged in this process, we welcome that because it brings a different perspective.

For example, from the insurance industry standpoint this should not be a battle of insurance companies versus a trial bar because nobody's going to win with that. It needs to be more about what this means for the economy, what this means for business success, what this means for consumers. So, we very much want to position it in that way.

And that's why that unique perspective and unique voice that a business can bring to the table and talk about what this means, when there are additional and exacerbated legal system costs that a company is bearing, what does that do? That takes away from that company's financial ability to invest in its employees, to invest in innovation, to invest in product development, to invest in offerings for consumers. So, that's the story that we would ask for business leaders to help tell and do it in a real way.

Policymakers, lawmakers react first and foremost to what they hear from their constituents, and that includes the businesses that are in their legislative districts. So, to tell that story about what that financial impact is going to be for a lawmaker's district, nothing equals that, that is paramount to being able to really underscore the points for businesses.

So, I would say that's probably the biggest thing. I would be remiss if we didn't talk about the political, engagement efforts on the part of the trial bar. They are very skillful and very powerful when it comes to electing trial attorneys to state legislatures to the bench in judicial races across the country.

They are very effective at funding candidates for office as well. That is the reality of American politics is that you have to be politically engaged in the process. We get massively outspent by the trial bar and that's just a reality. What that means for us is that we underscore the importance of being politically engaged as well. We encourage our member companies and their partners and their clients to do that as well. I can't underscore that enough because it does allow you the opportunity to relationship build with people that you need to talk to in the political process.

That would be another key takeaway is: companies should be encouraged to look at what they can do to participate in the political process. It gives them that opportunity to tell their story in a meaningful way. When you have that included with, you know, that that conversation about what the financial impact is to a business, it's a good one to punch, to really help hone a message and to really help tell that story.

ORENDORFF: Deirdre, I'll let you have the last word on this. What can businesses do? What should businesses do to get and stay involved?

MANNA: Yes, and I've talked a lot about the coalition, we've mentioned it several times. So now is the action step, right? The action step is to join the coalition, and it's so easy to do. You just send an email to LSAcoalition@zurichna.com (LSACoalition), just an email saying you want to join and you'll get added to the list.

We have 400 names on the list. It's continuing to grow and it includes an invitation to the in-person lawsuit abuse symposium that I mentioned. There's two virtual symposiums as well. One in February and then one in May. The symposium is actually in the fall, I think it's in October this year. We hosted the very first one. We had 75 people there. Liberty hosted it the next year. They had 200 travelers hosted it this year. There were 400 people either virtually or on the phone. Then Chubb is hosting it in 2025.

The coalition, what else does that mean? You follow the state's specific priorities. As we send out communications, we have grassroots efforts that include having your employees, for example, in Georgia, write to their legislator. We have instances where we had employees in New York write to the governor to veto bad legislation.

You have connections to your state or local tort reform groups as well as your legislatures interactions with the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, the American Tort Reform Association, APCIA and then interfacing with State and Local Bar Associations as well as the Defense Council. So, it's really easy to do, and we would encourage everyone. We want to continue to build on this momentum. It has not wavered and we only see it getting better and better as we move forward. So that's my call to action, Al.

ORENDORFF: Deirdre and I have been involved with this issue for a long time, back in the ‘90s. It has now resurfaced, as you pointed out. It has been difficult over the years, frankly, over decades, to make this real for people. [They realize], “Oh, this really does have an impact on me and my business.”

It's not just something that's out there between big corporations fighting each other, and then the jury's doing what they do. So, I thought this was a really good conversation to make it real for people. If this continues, this is going to actually impact me and my business and all the other things.

My point is that you can't talk about this in this way often enough because I think, frankly, one of the issues that we had in the ‘90s was we had a hard time ensuring that people had an understanding that there's a real impact on you. And it's not just corporations warring with each other. I think we're doing a better job now of making it clear to people of the wide-ranging implications.

MANNA: Right. I agree. Yes, totally agree.

ORENDORFF: Deirdre, Adam, thank you for joining us today. Great conversation.

SHORES: Thank you so much, I really enjoyed the conversation as well.

MANNA: Thank you. Thank you very much. It was great.

ORENDORFF: And thank you for listening. If you like the show, leave a comment or review wherever you get your favorite podcast, or you can drop us a note at media@zurichna.com.

Stay tuned for our next episode in our social inflation miniseries, where we'll have a deeper discussion on third-party litigation funding and its effects on social inflation and your business. Our guest will be Keith Daley, Chief Claims Officer for Zurich North America, and Sherman Joyce, President of ATRA, the American Tort Reform Association. This has been Future of Risk presented by Zurich North America.

1. Tort Costs in America, Third Edition, U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform, 2024.