ALEC's Efforts to Limit the Rights and Remedies of Americans Injured or Killed by Corporations
Through the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, global corporations and local politicians VOTED BEHIND CLOSED DOORS to change the laws to limit the rights and remedies of Americans injured or killed by corporations.
These so-called "model bills," advanced by corporations, erode the rights of an injured person, or that person's family, who files a complaint alleging that a corporation caused injury or death and should be held responsible for all the damages its actions caused.
According to bills the Center for Media and Democracy has helped reveal through ALEC Exposed, corporations had "both a VOICE and a VOTE" in the specific changes to the law that were then proposed in legislatures across the country. DID YOU?
Open a file folder containing all of the bills in this area.
To read the list of individual bills before opening them, click here.
WHO Is Behind ALEC?
Here are links to the names and backgrounds of the ALEC players:
As of 2011, (link) and (link) were the co-chairs of this ALEC task force.
Here(link) are the businesses, organizations, and people that have been part of the ALEC Civil Justice Task Force.
Here(link) are the corporations and people that have been on ALEC's boards.
Here(link) are the current and past leaders, staff, and "experts" of ALEC.
Related ALEC Exposed Articles
Here(link) is more information about ALEC and its funding, as well as its connections to the billionaire Kochs(link).
The bills supported by corporations and politicians on the Civil Justice Task Force would also:
Protect industries, such as the asbestos industry and Big Tobacco -- find out more about these protections here (link) and here (link), respectively.
Change the rules for people injured on the job. Bills to change the rules in workers compensation cases is included in our article about ALEC's efforts to limit workers' rights (including union rights), which is available here (link).
Limit the liability of health insurance companies and doctors by changing the rules for suing for medical malpractice, when a doctor's negligence causes injury or death, and changing the rules to make harder for Americans whose health or lives have been harmed by decisions of their HMO to sue their health insurance company (link).
Ways Corporations Tried to Rewrite the Law
The bills VOTED on behind closed doors by corporations and their politician allies through ALEC try to change American's rights by:
Making it easier for corporations to get a judge to dismiss an injured American's case before it gets to a jury;
Making it harder for injured people to use "class action" procedures which strengthen their negotiating power;
Making it more difficult to introduce new scientific research in injury cases through expert witnesses;
Limiting the liability of corporations by changing the rules for apportioning fault and thus limiting recover;
Limiting the ability of Americans to sue for injuries where the cause or effect was not known until much later; and
Changing the rules about where an injured American can sue and the process for appealing a ruling;
ALEC corporations and politicians also VOTED to change the legal rules by:
Limiting liability for injuries or death to Americans from defective products if a product is approved by the government (even though many regulatory agencies have been captured through the revolving door between government and the industries being regulated, many of the same industries pushing these bills);
Limiting the power of Congress to create national rules to protect Americans, no matter their state residence, if injured by defective corporate products distributed nationally; and, among other things,
Limiting the power of courts in personal injury cases.
Other Helpful Resources
Here are links to organizations that have been working to expose the ALEC corporate agenda and its affect on ordinary people:
The Center for Media and Democracy: SourceWatch (link) and PRWatch (link)
Add link to other organization
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Other helpful information about ALEC and related issues is available from these resources:
Ghostwriting article
NRDC Article
Other articles
Top Ten Ways YOU Can Help
You CAN help:
Share the information on this page through Facebook or email.
Tweet about this story along with the hashtag #ALECExposed.
Create a sign about ALEC for people to use outside the next ALEC convention or the next time a bill voted on by ALEC's corporations is proposed in your state, and post a picture of that sign on our ALECExposed page on Facebook; or create a video about ALEC corporations having an "equal" voice and vote as ALEC legislators and what that means for our democracy and then link to your video on our ALECExposed youtube page.
Support the Center for Media and Democracy's work building articles about the corporations and people involved in ALEC on ALECExposed's sister site, http://www.SourceWatch.org.
Support ALECExposed's work building articles about ALEC-related bills to repeal laws in your state, using this LINK.
Ask your representatives if they are involved in ALEC and to disclose any bills they supported that were VOTED on by corporations and to return any money their campaign received from any past or present corporation or CEO involved in ALEC.
Demand the truth from the ethics office in your state about politicians using taxpayer dollars to pay "dues" to ALEC or accepting "scholarships" or reimbursement from ALEC's corporate-funded coffers to pay for luxurious trips for themselves and their families for ALEC conventions; and submit a tip to tipline AT sourcewatch.org about information you obtain.
Write a letter to the editor of your local paper about ALEC and about politicians accepting "scholarships" for trips to luxurious ALEC events funded by corporations that favor legislation in your state; and ask your local television and radio stations to report about politicians connected to ALEC and ALEC corporations.
Write a blog documenting information about ALEC or ALECExposed bills and post it on this site, or propose a freelance reporting article on ALEC for publication by the Center for Media and Democracy's http://www.PRWatch.org, by emailing tipline AT PRWatch.org.
Tell the corporations your views about their role in ALEC: make a decision about whether to puchase any more of their goods or services and then write the companies (and the newspapers or magazines that run their ads) to tell them your decision and ask your friends to do the same.
Help your family, friends and fellow Americans better understand how global corporations are trying to rewrite your rights. You can also start an online discussion of these or related issues in the ALEC Exposed discussion page LinkHERE.
Did You Know about these Bills?
Some of This Corporate Agenda Has Become Law
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Limiting Liability for Killing Your Child or Spouse
One of the corporate-politician proposals of ALEC would limit the ability of a family to recover for emotional damages due to the death or injury of a loved one. This type of legislation basically makes working class or poor people's lives worth less to their families since they would be limited primarily to recovering the cost of lost earnings and medical care and not able to recover fully for the emotional damages caused by a traumatic injury or loss. These kind of provisions seek to prevent a jury of your peers from awarding you damages for all you have lost or suffered as a result of corporate negligence, malfeasance, or greed. Is a politician elected to represent and protect you actually protecting corporate profits through such legislation instead of you and your family?
Barring Corporate Liability for Killing Your Dog or Cat
In addition to limiting the rights of people injured by corporations, under the guise of limiting "frivolous" litigation one of the proposals would make it harder for you to obtain any compensation from a company whose negligence killed your family pet. In 2009, Americans learned that many U.S. pet food companies had shipped the production of food for their four-legged companions overseas and that Chinese contractors had contaminated the pet food with melamine in order to increase profit margins, resulting in the death and serious injuries of numerous dogs and cats in the U.S. ALEC's corporate-politician proposal would make it very difficult for a person to recover any damages for the loss of their beloved pet due to corporate negligence or misconduct in manufacturing food for Americans' pets.
What's Wrong with Rewriting the Law to Help Corporations that Injure Americans??
Here's what people are saying about ALEC's agenda
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ALEC Exposed is a project of the Center for Media and Democracy. CMD does NOT accept donations from for-profit corporations or government agencies. You can contact the publisher of ALEC Exposed, CMD's Executive Director, Lisa Graves, via editor AT prwatch.org.
