Shortly after my inauguration as President of MSMA in 2002, Bill Roberts, then Executive Director of MSMA, told me that I picked a quiet year to be President as tort reform was to be tackled the next year. Two months later, I was seated in Governor Ronnie Musgrove’s conference room with Dr. Randy Easterling, Mr. Roberts, and Dr. Hugh Gamble across the table from the heavy hitters of the Mississippi plaintiffs’ bar. The Governor, realizing the effect that “Jackpot Justice” was having on patients, physicians, and hospitals in Mississippi, was set on creating a more equitable judicial climate by attempting to reach a compromise between our two groups. These meetings marked the onset of tort reform.
What followed was an improbable task that became landmark legislation, the first bill, HB 2, which was signed into law on October 8, 2002, and the second, HB 19, signed on December 3, 2002. I say improbable due to the make-up of the two committees formed in the legislature, one in the House and the other in the Senate. The Senate committee had 21 members appointed with 12 being lawyers controlling 57% of the committee. The House Judiciary A Committee was composed of 25 members, of which 13 were lawyers controlling 52% of the committee. The deck, so to speak, was stacked against us, yet our patients and physicians prevailed after the longest Special Session in Mississippi history, with HB 2 being passed by a vote of 87 to 32 in the House and 41 to 6 in the Senate.
In this special edition of the Journal MSMA, you will hear many terms that may be unfamiliar to you as physicians - venue, mass torts, joint and several liability among others. You will learn of the judicial climate physicians were facing at the turn of the twenty-first century, including the atmosphere of what it was like to practice at that time and the challenges that our profession faced. The ultimate victory could not have been achieved without the remarkable assistance of our patients, who played such a significant role in the support of our efforts. Most importantly, you will hear of how patient care was ultimately preserved.
Representative Bobby Moody of Louisville, once stated in a subcommittee hearing: “Doc you have an untapped source in your patients, that the trial bar will never have, and they’re terrified of you using them.” The physicians of Mississippi took this advice to heart and spoke to their patients directly and asked for their support. The result was the passage of the first significant tort reform in the history of our state. I would like to take the opportunity to thank the Mississippi Legislature for doing the hard work and protecting Mississippi patients with this landmark legislation.
It is an honor to be selected as the guest editor of the special edition of the Journal. When putting this edition together, we realized that two decades of physicians are now practicing in Mississippi who may not have any knowledge of what transpired 20 years ago. Remember always that our patients come first and take to heart the words of Sir William Osler: “We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from life.”