We want you!

Picture the old poster of Uncle Sam wearing the white top hat, blue sport coat, and red tie. He’s pointing out to us and saying, “I want you.” The 2025 legislative session is fully upon us with positions staked out, hearings taking place, votes being made, and more changes upon us.  

Before the session began, Governor Jeff Landry made his feelings clear on the need to lower automobile insurance prices. He is supporting legislation that makes changes to the civil justice system and also supporting legislation that creates better regulation and oversight of the insurance industry. 

Insurance Commissioner Tim Temple responded by blaming all the woes of the auto insurance crisis on the civil justice system and trial lawyers, even though years of tort reform have not lowered prices for any Louisianan.  

The “great and final” tort reform legislation of 2020 was supposed to lower claims, settlements, and insurance rates for all drivers, according to then-president of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry Stephen Waguespack. 

After the package of legislation passed, Waguespack stated in a radio interview, “[F]or too long in Louisiana drivers have had to pay unfair, high rates. In fact, it is the second highest in the nation because of a flawed legal system. Everyone has known about the problem forever. Now we’ve finally put a solution in place.”  

Waguespack even promised to take a tiki torch to the Capitol to protest if rates didn’t go down. We all know they didn’t. Did anyone see Waguespack protesting with his tiki torch?

But I digress.

Legislators have pre-filed bills in this session seeking once again to change the collateral source rule, legislatively overrule the Housely presumption, change comparative fault to a “modified” system, and increase the “no pay, no play” limit to the first $100,000.

Instead of Uncle Sam, you have Aunt Connie and Uncle Brian saying, “We want you!” We want and need you and your clients to help us both in Baton Rouge and in your districts. You can do that in several ways:

• Follow, review, and try to understand the effects of the proposed legislation.
• Get your clients who would have been or will be affected by the changes to testify to the committee when a bill is set for hearing.
• Appear at the committee meetings to show your support and opposition to the legislation and testify if necessary.
• Respond to LAJ requests on certain bills to relay messages to legislators. Contact and have your clients and friends contact their legislators to explain the true meaning of tort “reform” legislation and the detrimental effects of bills that limit the rights of injured parties.  
• Provide financial support to LAJ to help offset the cost of the effort in the legislature this session. 

If you have read the bills that have been filed during what is supposed to be a fiscal session, you know it is all about taking rights away from Louisianans while enriching insurance companies. 

None of the proposed legislation from the insurance commissioner will reduce insurance rates. The commissioner and the legislators who are filing these bills know it. In 2019, pursuant to a legislative task force, actuaries from insurance companies and the department of insurance studied these same measures. They said it would not move the needle. That did not matter.  

The legislature passed extensive tort reform that put these issues to rest in 2020. We have that study, 50 years of tort reform, and skyrocketing insurance rates to prove that this does not reduce insurance rates.

Aunt Connie, Uncle Brian, and the residents of Louisiana want and need you to help with the legislative session. To all of you who responded to our request for assistance with the session, I sincerely thank you. This will have to be a true team effort to succeed in dealing with a supermajority and a real issue in Louisiana — auto insurance rates. Remember, insurers are more profitable in Louisiana in the personal auto market than they are in neighboring states or nationwide, and it isn’t close.

There are many solutions to the insurance-cost issue: improving roads, strengthening truck safety standards, developing vehicle technology to warn of potential crashes, increasing insurance regulation, publishing premium comparisons, and requiring all insurance data to be made public.

We cannot succeed without you and your clients’ help. We want you and thank you!