
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 7, 1995                   TAG: 9503070109
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES AND THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                 LENGTH: Medium

BILLS COULD OVERHAUL CIVIL SUITS

The House on Monday began debating a package of bills intended to reduce the number of lawsuits, taking up as its first item a sharply weakened version of a proposal to require those who lose their challenges to pay the legal costs of their opponents.

The debate over the ``loser pays'' provision began a weeklong effort by the Republican-controlled Congress to vastly overhaul the American legal system. The proposal, which the House is expected to vote on today, would write into law a modified version of the so-called English Rule that requires those who sue and lose in civil cases to pay the costs and fees of their opponents in many cases.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the Roanoke lawyer and Republican member of the Judiciary Committee who crafted the modified version, said it would encourage both parties to settle many lawsuits before they reached court.

Under the Goodlatte provision, in some circumstances the winning side in a lawsuit could be forced to pay the loser's fees and court costs. As a consequence, the bill now is less a ``loser pays'' measure than an incentive to settle.

Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, set the tone of the debate when he said the legislation would implement ``a contract with corporate America'' that would result in blocking the ability of ordinary people to bring lawsuits to recover damages they are due.

The debate over the Republican efforts to overhaul the system of civil litigation has engaged nearly the entire spectrum of Washington's lobbyists in representing all those groups that would be affected. Both sides have produced a torrent of alarming advertisements and television commercials as they seek to assume the high moral ground in the debate.

Attorney General Janet Reno and presidential counsel Abner Mikva said some of the GOP ideas ``are unfair and tilt the legal playing field dramatically to the disadvantage of consumers and middle-class citizens.''

The provision requires one side in a lawsuit to pay part of the other side's attorney fees and other costs if it spurned a pre-trial settlement offer and then won less at the trial.

In a test vote, however, the House rejected, 306-115, a proposal to remove that provision in favor of one awarding attorney's fees to a defendant only in cases ruled to be frivolous.

The lawmakers also rejected, 347-71, an amendment that would have limited the use of contingency fees, under which attorneys receive a percentage of the money awarded to their clients.

Here is how the proposal modified by Goodlatte would work:

A party would be declared the ``loser'' if he or she refused a settlement offer and the jury came in with an award lower than the settlement proposal. For example, if a person sued a corporation for damages, the corporation's offer of $50,000 to settle the suit was rejected and the jury awarded the party $40,000, the plaintiff would be declared the loser and would have to pay the corporation's costs.

Under the Goodlatte measure, the loser would be liable only for legal fees equal to his own.

by CNB