State officials should explore the possibility of overhauling Arkansas’ tort laws, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday at the Arkansas Trucking Association’s annual conference.
The Republican governor made the remarks in response to a question from a person attending the trucking association’s conference about where her administration stands on addressing “tort reform” in Arkansas.
“I think it is something that we certainly have to have on the table, [and] it certainly has to be part of the conversation,” Sanders told about 300 people attending the trucking association’s annual conference at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock.
“It wasn’t something that became a big priority during this [year’s regular] session, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it comes up, even during our fiscal session next year,” she said.
The fiscal session in 2024 will begin in April because the presidential primary election in Arkansas will be in March, Sanders noted. The 2024 fiscal session is slated to begin April 10. Arkansas’ presidential and state primary election is March 5.
She said there are a lot of ongoing discussions about the state’s tort laws.
“I think it is something we certainly need to take a look at and engage and see what opportunities are in front of us for Arkansas,” Sanders said.
Arkansas Trucking Association President Shannon Newton said in an interview “it’s time that we push back and see what opportunities exist in Arkansas” because “our industry is certainly being targeted by” trial lawyers and “put us in a bad position.
“The nuclear verdicts [and] the litigious climate we are seeing, those costs are impacting our business,” she said. “Regardless of what is happening in the borders of our state, so we are all insured in the same very small market.”
In 2016, the Arkansas Supreme Court struck down a citizen-referred amendment because the sponsor failed to provide an appropriate definition of “non-economic damages” for which caps were sought on medical malpractice suits.
In 2018, the Arkansas Supreme Court nixed a proposed amendment called Issue 1 referred to voters by the 2017 General Assembly from the ballot. The proposal included limits on both non-economic and punitive damages. The state’s high court said lawmakers illegally rolled into a single amendment the separate issues of capping lawsuit damages, limiting attorney fees and granting the Legislature the authority to amend court rules.
Asked by a trucking association conference attendee about state funding for workforce training with private industry, Sanders said Wednesday the state already has a number of state grants available through the Department of Commerce that “allow us to target specific sectors.
“We know that the trucking industry is vital to our state, so that would be a natural fit for us to invest in and lean into,” she said.
The state’s chief workforce officer, Mike Rogers, has been tasked “with doing a statewide assessment of what we have, what’s working, where are the holes, and how do we fill those,” Sanders said.
In her opening remarks at the conference, she said “I am so grateful for the unbelievable work that those of you in this room do on a daily basis.
“Not only do you help power our entire state, but you power our entire country,” Sanders said.
She said “we saw what a vital role the trucking industry plays” in Arkansas and across the country during the past several years.
“We are right here in the heart and the center of what trucking does all over the United States, and the people in this room make Arkansas look so good on a daily basis” and a leader in trucking across the nation, Sanders said before taking a handful of questions from the audience.
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