Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association Newsletter

Class Action Reform was the focus
May 2004 - Oklahoma City, Oklahoma - The Journal Record

Class Action Reform was the focus as the Oklahoma legislature’s joint senate and house special committee on lawsuit reform held its third in a series of four public hearings on April 29. The special committee was formed by the Oklahoma legislature to conduct hearings on the primary areas of Gov. Henry's tort reform bill.

     Mineral owners who were class members in recent class action royalty lawsuits against oil and gas companies in Oklahoma were presented by the opponents of class action reform to testify as to their perceptions of the benefits of class action litigation. The opponents of reform also presented Patricia Hatamyar, a law professor from Oklahoma City University who had previously practiced in the area of class action litigation with a Chicago law firm.

     Proponents of lawsuit reform presented three witnesses. The concerns of the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association and the Oklahoma Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association of Oklahoma were presented to the Committee by Mark Christiansen, an Oklahoma City energy litigation attorney with Crowe & Dunlevy. Christiansen advised the committee that the concern of the industry associations is that class action procedure has, in recent years, been increasingly over-used and expanded far beyond the scope of appropriate classes in terms of the number of class members, and in terms of the types of claims that have been certified for trial on a class-wide basis. He also expressed the concern that claims from other states that should be presented and adjudicated in those other states are being filed in Oklahoma because of plaintiff lawyer perceptions that they can obtain certification of more-expansive classes in Oklahoma that would not be certified by the courts in other states.

     The driving force behind the growth and expansion of class actions, the committee was told, is the fact that class actions have become the procedural device of choice for plaintiff attorneys who seek to convert three clients into 3,000 or more clients, by converting their individual lawsuits into class actions.

     Christiansen described for the committee the threat that the over-use of class action procedure presents to our system of justice. It becomes virtually impossible for the judge or jury to, at the time of trial, consider all of the types of detailed facts and circumstances that, in non class action lawsuits on the very same types of claims, have been viewed by our courts as being very important to the outcome of the case. Instead of the case being decided in the way published court decisions indicate that the case should be decided, the consolidation of hundreds or thousands of claimants in a single case often has the practical effect of homogenizing the perceived rights of all parties to the detriment of our justice system.

     The other two spokesmen appearing on behalf of the proponents of lawsuit reform were Victor Schwartz, who is with the Washington, D.C. office of Shook, Hardy & Bacon and also serves as the General Counsel to the American Tort Reform Association; and Randy Harp, Chief Operating Officer of Pre-Paid Legal Services, Inc. Mr. Schwartz described the growth of " regulation through litigation," in which plaintiff attorneys attempt to circumvent the legislative process by asking courts to create new law through their decisions in lawsuits. Mr. Harp described the experiences of his company, as a defendant in prior class action lawsuits, with the mis-use of class action procedure.

     The committee conducted its fourth and final public hearing on May 6. The focus of the final hearing was on general civil procedural law changes and frivolous lawsuits.

Contact

no contact