How Gov. Greg Abbott won millions and helped stop Texans from doing the same
Forty years ago this week, a tree fell on Greg Abbott, paralyzing the future governor from the waist down. He sued for damages and won millions—and then helped stop Texans from doing the same.
Forty years ago this week, a 26-year-old law school graduate named Greg Abbott was out jogging on the streets of River Oaks when a tree snapped and fell, paralyzing him from the waist down. Abbott, in the midst of studying for the bar, sued the tree owner and later the tree-trimming company that had neglected the 75-year-old tree. He won a multimillion-dollar settlement, the details of which remained private for years.
Decades later, Abbott campaigned in support of tort reform curtailing "frivolous" lawsuits and won. Abbott's critics claimed that he helped usher in a Texas significantly less friendly to plaintiffs seeking damages like the ones Abbott won. Looking back on the case 40 years later, Don Riddle, Abbott's personal injury lawyer at the time, agrees that Texas has changed.
"It would be next to impossible to get the kind of settlement we got," Riddle told Chron Monday. Tort reform, or as Riddle calls it, "tort deform," has severely capped the kind of damages individuals can seek out, and Riddle doesn't see that changing in Texas anytime soon. So how did we get here, and how did Abbott come to turn against the legal mechanism that made him millions?
The Accident
Abbott's accident was more than just a wayward tree branch. The falling tree totaled two cars and broke Abbott's back and some of his ribs, resulting in months of surgery and recovery and lifelong paralysis in his legs. Yet to embark on his future, lucrative law career, Abbott had no health insurance or even a paycheck to cover the medical expenses.
The injuries left Abbott with two steel rods in his spine. Although debilitating, Abbott has since turned the accident into a lesson of perseverance on the campaign trail. As his campaign website says, "While some politicians talk about having a spine of steel, Governor Abbott actually has one."
The Lawsuit
Abbott's soon-to-be colleagues connected him with Riddle, who agreed to sue the tree's owner and the tree-trimming company on Abbott's behalf. Poring through documents, Riddle was able to prove that the homeowner had known the tree suffered from root rot and that the tree company had mistakenly treated the tree with a chemical that worsened its condition.
"We made an extremely nice settlement for him," Riddle said of the outcome.
The question of who is responsible for managing Houston's aging urban forest remains up for debate to this day, particularly as residents point fingers at electricity provider CenterPoint Energy for failing to regularly trim vegetation around the company's power lines. In the end, residents do have a responsibility to manage trees on their property, covering the costs of trimming and removal.
The Settlement
Dick Ellis, one of the experts brought in on the suit, told The Texas Tribune in 2002 that Abbott was a particularly sympathetic plaintiff who, barely beginning his career, also happened to be broke. He could have never afforded a trial, Ellis said, and so they agreed to settle.
The details of Abbott's settlement were never released on public record, and Abbott himself remained cagey on the matter until 2013, when he disclosed the payments while making a gubernatorial bid. Based on Abbott's life expectancy, the payments totaled to about $11 million when adjusted for inflation, although the full number won't be known until Abbott's death. Much of those payments cover Abbott's ongoing medical expenses, he said, many of which are not covered by insurance.
“There are thousands of dollars a year out of my own pocket,” Abbott told the Tribune in 2013. “But there’s all kinds of other things that normal people wouldn’t think of, such as additional costs for modifications, ranging from cars to ramps to other kinds of expenditures to be able to move around in life.”
Tort reform, widely adopted in the mid-90s, shut down the possibility that individuals could get similar results, Riddle said. "In those days, any negligence no matter how large or small could be held responsible for the entire loss," Riddle said, and plaintiffs could sue multiple defendants at once. "That doesn't exist in the same form today."
The Campaign
Sixteen years after he won millions, Abbott, now a candidate for attorney general, campaigned to usher in tort reforms that would further limit plaintiffs' abilities to pursue accident damages. Democrats called hypocrisy, but Abbott maintained that the reforms only applied to so-called "frivolous" lawsuits clogging up the court systems, and that an individual faced with the same circumstances as Abbott could still win a similar settlement today.
Still, beyond Abbott, tort laws have changed significantly in the past few decades. Most people might recall an infamous 1994 suit in which a woman sued McDonald's after getting burned by their coffee. The woman, popularly conceived as the poster child of frivolous lawsuits, sustained third-degree burns to her crotch and groin area after placing the cup between her legs to add cream and sugar. Her lawyers were able to prove that McDonald's served its coffee near-boiling between 180 and 190 degrees—30 to 40 degrees hotter than competing companies.
The McDonald's case is just one example of "indoctrination" insurance companies pushed decades ago to sway juries against big-buck settlements, Riddle said. Most settlements were paid out through insurance money, Riddle explained, and so companies had an interest in keeping payments low. Few people realize that the McDonald's woman's settlement had later been reversed, Riddle added. "That poor lady never really got anything," he said.
Back in Texas, however, Abbott ran his attorney general campaign attacking Democratic nominee Kirk Watson for his background as a personal injury lawyer. He was heavily financed by the PAC Texans for Lawsuit Reform, a political supergroup still backing Abbott and other Texas power players today. Despite the ideological headstand, Abbott won the race handily with 56.7 percent of the vote, going on to become the state's longest-serving Attorney General.
The Fallout
Although Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis tried to rekindle accusations of Abbott's hypocrisy in a series of controversial campaign ads in 2014, her calls ultimately fell on deaf ears. Abbott beat Davis 59 percent to 39 percent, continuing Republicans' decades-long streak of statewide domination.
Today, Texans for Lawsuit Reform PAC continues to dole out millions to Texas Republicans including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, House speaker Dade Phelan, and yes, Abbott. The governor meanwhile is in the midst of setting up a new business court in Texas, complete with governor-appointed judges charged with taking businesses' unique interests into account.
"Texas is so bogged down by corporate influence," Riddle said, citing Texas' lawmakers hefty corporate campaign contributions. "Look at what people like Governor Abbott get today from ERCOT...you can see it happening, but normal people don't have the mechanism to change that...and lawmakers are not inclined to make changes."
Even everyday Texans rarely sympathize with personal injury plaintiffs, Riddle said, pointing to a 2003 constitutional amendment in which Texans directly voted to cap medical malpractice payments by doctors and hospitals to just $250,000. "It just defies all reason, but it happened," Riddle said. "We did it to ourselves."
Riddle is now estranged from his one-time plaintiff turned governor, although he said he and Abbott did keep in touch for a time following the suit. "He's gotten so big and powerful and famous, and I was misquoted a couple times by the newspapers, that I think he developed a dislike for me," Riddle said.
The Truth About Tort Reform
Our Civil Justice System, Tort Law and Who's Behind the Attacks
The one place where every individual, workers or small business is equal to the world’s most wealthy and powerful corporations is in our courtrooms. It is because of this that corporate special interests are focused on restricting your access to our courts and changing state and federal laws so our civil justice system can no longer hold them accountable. This is being done through what those special interests call “tort reform.” In reality, those changes are providing corporate immunities and allowing those corporations to increase their profits at the expense of consumers, workers, policy holders, small businesses, the government and others.
Our Civil Courts and Tort Law
Our civil justice system and tort law protect both individuals and businesses. A tort is “a wrongful act that results in injury to another’s person, property or reputation or the like, and for which the injured party is entitled to receive compensation.”
For individuals, these laws protect us from:
Discrimination
Violations of our civil rights
Physical injury
Dangerous products
Toxins in our environment
Cheating and financial fraud
And more
Tort law is also very important for our local businesses. Business torts protect them from:
Fraud
Misrepresentation
Intentional interference with contracts
Interference with business or employee relations
Unfair competition
Misappropriation (stealing) of trade secrets and ideas
Defamation
In civil cases, a plaintiff (person or business) files a claim charging that harm has occurred because another person or company has violated tort law. As is provided in the 7th Amendment of the Bill of Rights, the case is tried in a courtroom before a jury. Unlike criminal cases where the defendant is found guilty, in civil cases the defendant is found liable for the damages. Compensation to the plaintiff can be comprised of both economic and non-economic damages. Sometimes a jury will also award punitive damages when a defendant’s conduct was willful and reckless and led to the plaintiff being harmed. Punitive damages are the only source of real accountability for egregious misconduct by corporations, because corporations cannot go to jail. Punitive damages are intended as punishment for the worst kinds of conduct.
A lot of the media coverage and attacks on our nation’s civil justice system is focused on tort cases, but these cases involve just 3.5 percent of all civil filings nationally. Of that total, nearly one-third of the cases are business v. business tort cases.
The Push for "Tort Reform"
So-called “tort reforms” limit or prohibit the ability for you and our courts to hold negligent corporations and individuals accountable. This allows corporations and their insurers to increase profits at the expense of the public. Sometimes the costs for these injuries have to be covered by taxpayers because those harmed are forced to take public assistance. It also affects overall public safety because wrongdoers aren’t held accountable.
Insurance corporations claims that these tort reform laws are needed so they can “afford” to do business.
Early estimates show that the property/casualty insurance industry had a net profit of $50 billion in 2014 (Hartford Courant - January 7, 2014).
The industry's net worth totaled a record $673.9 billion as of September 30. The industry's gains on its investments totaled $8.8 billion just through the first nine months of 2014, with net investment income totaling $34.3 billion. (Verisk Analytics - January 26, 2015).
The 2013 net profits for the industry totaled $63.8 billion (Verisk Analytics – April 21, 2014)
The corporate special interests behind the effort also claim that the reforms are needed to protect small business interests—but the “cost and frequency of lawsuits” ranked 71st of 75 concerns in the National Federation of Independent Businesses’ 2012 poll.
“Threat of lawsuits” ranks dead last among problems associated with business costs
In 2008, it was 65th. In 2004, it was 64th.
Prior to 2004, it was never even listed as a concern
