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Legal reform advocates from Texas and Louisiana gathered on the steps of the State Capitol Wednesday to make the point to lawmakers that civil justice reform should be a priority to help grow Louisiana’s economy.

The crux of their message was that lawsuit abuse is costing Louisiana good jobs. Armed with a banner that read, “Legal reform works.Let’s bring it to Louisiana,” the group highlighted statistics that show jobs growing in Texas as a result of legal reform and, conversely, jobs being lost in Louisiana because of the state’s poor legal climate.

A study conducted by the nationally recognized economist Ray Perryman shows lawsuit reforms enacted in Texas over the last two decades have generated 499,000 new, permanent jobs in the Lone Star State. Meanwhile, an economic report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform estimates Louisiana’s poor legal climate costs the state more than 50,000 new jobs every year.

“At a time when our state is suffering from a weak economy and a huge deficit, our neighbors in Texas are putting people to work. How is that?” asked Melissa Landry, executive director of the legal watchdog group Louisiana Lawsuit Abuse Watch. “The answer is legal reform. There’s mounting evidence that suggests economic opportunities in Texas are much easier to come by because employers there spend less time in court fighting excessive lawsuits and more time creating jobs. That’s a trend we need to bring right here to Louisiana.”

To learn more about this model for creating jobs and cutting lawsuits, LLAW invited leaders from the Texas legal reform movement to come and share their success story.

“It is hard to imagine, but it was not long ago when Texas was known as the ‘courthouse to the world’ and the ‘wild west of lawsuit abuse’,” said Sara Trolinger with the Rio Grand Valley Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse. “But that all began to change in 1990 with the birth of the grassroots movement to fight lawsuit abuse in Texas.”

“Over the past two decades, we’ve worked with citizens and lawmakers across Texas to make lawsuit reform a top priority,” Trolinger continued. “Working together to put payrolls before payouts, we’ve enacted common sense laws to rein in excessive damage awards and prevent court shopping. We’ve put a stop to out-of-state lawsuits that had nothing to do with Texas. And under ‘loser pays’ legislation passed in 2011, people who consider filing lawsuits in Texas will be forced to consider the practicality of their complaints before taking legal action because they now face the threat of paying for the other party’s legal fees if the plaintiff’s case is found to be groundless.”

“Because of these and many other legal reforms, the Texas civil justice system has become a national model for legal reform, and the Lone Star State has become a jobs machine,” she added. “While the nation is struggling to put nearly 12 million people back to work, Texas is thriving. Unemployment is down, new job creation is up, and businesses are open. This is a model from which Louisiana could learn a lot.”

Among the numerous Texas reforms are laws to put a stop to abusive asbestos claims. Ironically, this spring Louisiana legislators took a pass on proposed bills to bring transparency and help stop abuses in this area of law.

Indeed, Louisiana lawmakers would be well advised to take a closer look at the legal reforms that have been passed in Texas, and consider bringing these reforms – and the jobs they can generate – to Louisiana.

As part of the national “Create Jobs, Not Lawsuits” tour, this event was sponsored by Louisiana Lawsuit Abuse Watch and the national Sick of Lawsuits campaign.

Throughout 2012, the tour is visiting communities across the country to raise awareness about the damage caused by lawsuit abuse. The message of the tour is clear: lawsuit abuse is hurting our economy and costing our nation jobs. To learn more visit, www.sickoflawsuits.com or www.LLAW.org.

Melissa Landry is Executive Director of Louisiana Lawsuit Abuse Watch, a non-partisan citizen watchdog group dedicated to improving Louisiana’s legal climate.

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Since its difficulties with Huey Long, Big Oil has sought warm relations with Louisiana governors, and vice versa.

To advance nationally within the Republican Party, whose last national convention erupted into chants of “Drill, Baby, Drill,” contenders must at least be acceptable to the energy industry. To the broader electorate, however, Gov. Bobby Jindal, as an oil-state governor under consideration for the GOP vice presidential nomination, can’t afford to be seen as an industry toady.

Early in his first term, Jindal and the oil companies got along swimmingly, as an industry journal praised his administration’s “improved” permitting process. The state’s boom in exploration, from the Outer Continental Shelf to the Haynesville Shale, led to economic development that he could share credit for, despite the national recession.

Then came BP. The massive oil spill in April 2010 that ravaged the Gulf, the coast and its economy offered Jindal a golden opportunity: to whup up on an oil company, with the state and the nation cheering him on, and to lash out at the response of the Obama administration.

While singling out BP, Jindal championed the industry as a whole by leading the protest of the exploration moratorium imposed by the president, thus supporting the GOP’s job-killer line of attack against Obama.

As a bonus, Jindal was able to connect the state’s legal claims against BP to a 50-year, $50 billion coastal restoration plan awaiting approval, with half the funding coming from Gulf spill files and offshore revenue sharing.

Through his first term, Jindal struck a profile as a defender of the industry while a lead critic of its worst actor, and the man with the plan for the coast.

All which made the oil guys wonder why he would risk rupturing that relationship by his politics at the Legislature this spring. The companies looked to the governor to broker a favorable solution to their long-running legal battle with landowners and trial lawyers over oilfield pollution caused decades ago — the so-called legacy lawsuits.

Oil companies grew impatient and concerned that Jindal would not fully back their position. They wanted a process for having the state submit remediation plans in court that would get the sites cleaned up and limit the companies’ exposure to broader damage claims. It more than peeved oil executives that Jindal seemed sympathetic to his friends — major landowners Mike Foster and Roy O. Martin III — as well as small independent oil operators, who wanted to be let off the hook on damage claims. It further alarmed them that Jindal had collected $280,000 from trial lawyers in the last election cycle.

Much of this would have gone unnoticed by the general population but for Sen. David Vitter, who jumped in four-square behind the oil companies and called out Jindal for not forging a deal. Failing to do so, charged Vitter, maintained the status quo of the “trial lawyer bonanza.” Without saying so, he was putting Jindal’s vice presidential possibilities on the line by casting him as an ally of trial lawyers and a foe to industry.

The matter dragged on until, suddenly, with state senators pressing for a resolution and with Jindal’s assent, the agreement came together. The companies got what they wanted, the landowners and small operators got something, the trial lawyers got nothing.

Had Jindal fallen in line early with the oil companies, he may have been labeled their lackey. Instead, he stuck with the local millionaires against the corporate billionaires, for a while, before making his deal with the petro giants. If anything, the resolution enhances his VP stock by having him appear as a friend but no tool of Big Oil.

Pretty slick on his part.

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As much as Louisianans have worked to pass ethics reforms, clean up the Legislature and show the world that the days of political corruption and old-school politics are behind us now, the tactics on display last week in the Louisiana Senate Natural Resources Committee demonstrate old-school political-boss politics are still very much alive here.

At issue is Louisiana’s process for addressing onshore environmental conditions that may relate to oil drilling activity that occurred decades or even a century ago. A few plaintiffs’ lawyers file huge damage claims in rural parish courtrooms and extort large settlements. The cases can drag on for years without any environmental clean-up taking place, where needed. Surprisingly state agency research on these lawsuits released this year found that three-quarters of the claims are filed with no significant evidence of any damage, and LSU economic research found the impact to be 30,000 jobs foregone because of these so-called “legacy” lawsuits.

In a direct response to the Louisiana House’s passage of the legacy lawsuit reform bill HB 618 last Wednesday, plaintiff-lawyer interests rammed through committee a substitute of another bill, SB 731. The substitute bill, which includes completely new language, was introduced for the first time that morning, and passed in less than an hour with very limited discussion about what the bill actually does. It had not been properly vetted, and the public was not given access to its effects. That’s one heck of a way to pass legislation. …

This is the complete opposite of the open, transparent and deliberative committee process led by Rep. Neil Abramson on House-passed legacy reform bill HB 618.

In fact this is reminiscent of same bullying tactics the trial lawyers have used to try to intimidate Rep. Abramson with trumped-up ethics complaints and the ridiculous attempt to discredit the LSU economist who identified significant economic impacts on the state from legacy suits.

Let’s hope “good government” doesn’t evolve into “whatever’s good for a few powerful plaintiffs’ lawyers,” because the Senate committee-passed bill is bad legislation. It’s no wonder they wanted to rush it through committee.

Among the many issues with the substitute bill is that it creates a bureaucratic quagmire by forcing remediation plans to be reviewed and approved by not just the state’s Office of Conservation, but also by the Commissioner of Agriculture, the secretary of the Department of Natural Resources, the secretary of the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, the secretary of the Department of Environmental Quality, the secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals, and in some instances the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority.

How could this agency merry-go-round possibly help to expedite the clean-up process?

Another major issue is tricky language in the bill which suggests the legislation is prospective, meaning it will do nothing to help resolve the backlog of hundreds of lawsuits that are currently stuck in the process.

If the goal is to prolong the process of developing a remediation plan as long as possible, for the purpose of dragging out litigation and forcing settlements to extract as much money from defendants as possible — which is the situation we already have in Louisiana today — it seems this Senate bill will certainly ensure that the legacy abuse will continue. If the goal is to expedite the process and get our land cleaned up more quickly — it is clear the Senate bill is not the solution.

Let Louisiana be a lesson that using old-school politics to bow to the greed of a few plaintiff lawyers does not make good policy.

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The last few years have seen state Sen. Robert Adley, R-Benton, introduce one measure after another to smother the flames created by so-called legacy lawsuits in Louisiana. Legacy lawsuits arise from old — sometimes decades-old — contamination of land by oil and gas drillers. The litigation gets its name because subsequent drillers on contaminated lands “inherit” the liability created by previous, often defunct companies.

As Adley has carried the legislative ball for Big Oil, which constantly seeks to limit its exposure to environmental litigation, landowners and environmentalists have likewise ramped up their opposition campaigns.

With the Legislature beginning the latest incarnation of the ongoing debate, Adley, a licensed Christian minister, is serving as the Upper Chamber’s Jeremiah, telling all what’s to come. “You need to be prepared,” he says. “I’m telling you, they’ll start running TV. They’ll run radio.”

A high-dollar political consultant — Roy Fletcher of Baton Rouge — was perhaps too effective in attacking Adley’s message in a previous battle. “I ended up hiring him for my next campaign,” Adley recalls.

The legacy issue is complicated. Contaminated lands require mitigation, and lawsuits have led to huge judgments — which may or may not lead to cleanups. This issue is not your typical business-versus-trial lawyers scrap. In many lawsuits, both sides are millionaires. That makes it tough for lawmakers to choose sides.

Landowners argue that the current system gives too much leverage to Big Oil. Big Oil argues that trial lawyers are milking the issue to line their pockets. Environmentalists say the state Department of Natural Resources inevitably backs Big Oil.

How should liability be addressed? Who should mediate? How should the fields be restored? There are no easy answers.

During last year’s legislative debate, opponents unleashed robocalls in the districts of lawmakers on a key House committee. The calls stirred up voters and prompted them to press “1” to be connected directly to their lawmaker.

Rep. Truck Gisclair, D-Larose, who has a bill this year to regulate robocalls, says his office was “swamped with hundreds of calls, about 400 to 500 in a three-hour period” last year.

For those who can’t afford robocalls, there are always mass emails. House Civil Law Chairman Neil Abramson, D-New Orleans, said someone recently threatened him with a “firestorm” if he moved forward with his legacy bill, which is backed by Big Oil.

Last week, the night before a committee vote on Abramson’s bill, New Orleans political consultant Cheron Brylski issued a statement accusing Abramson of having a “conflict of interest” in authoring a legacy bill because his law firm represents oil companies. Brylski asked in the email, “Is Neil Abramson working for himself, his law firm, and his big oil clients while serving as a state representative and committee chairman?”

Abramson practices law at the New Orleans firm of Liskow & Lewis. According to the firm’s Web site, he represents “oil and gas companies in legacy suits involving claims of property and groundwater contamination.”

Abramson says he has handled only a “few matters” involving legacy cases. He said the conflict of interest claim is a lie, adding that lawmakers file bills in regard to their professions all the time. “That’s how the process works,” he said, calling Brylski’s attack “totally out of bounds and inappropriate.”

Part of Brylski’s criticism was based on Abramson’s decision to move forward on the bill while negotiations continued between landowners and Big Oil. Opponents of the bills felt betrayed because they believed no bills would move forward while the two sides were trying to forge a compromise.

Additionally, attorney Don Carmouche, who is aligned with Jimmy Faircloth, Gov. Jindal’s former legal council and attorney for landowners, has filed an ethics complaint to the Louisiana Ethics Board against Abramson stating the same charges.

Abramson’s House Bill 618 won committee approval last week. It allows the courts to admit as evidence cleanup plans submitted by DNR. The provision was backed by the oil industry and opposed by landowners, who claim Big Oil virtually owns DNR.

The bill has a long way to go, but already it’s clear that both sides of this fight have money and political muscle to spare.

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Weeks before a Louisiana House committee voted on a civil litigation reform measure, state Rep. Neil Abramson said he was lured to a remote part of the capitol and had his career threatened by an individual whose identity he is not revealing.

“In my five years of public service it has never happened to me before what has happened to me on this topic – that I was threatened and attempted to be coerced in the handling of my matters as a public servant,” Abramson said. “I think that is completely out of bounds and inappropriate.”

Abramson’s remarks were heard in a video recording of a Civil Law Committee on Tuesday.

The committee, which Abramson chairs, passed a legacy lawsuit reform proposal that would change the way courts deal with environment lawsuits. It would allow the state Department of Natural Resources to limit damages to the amount it would cost industries to clean up sites before a jury is allowed to hear the case.

This change would clear up one of the energy industry’s complaints that anyone who owns land that was formerly used for drilling, whether polluted or not, could benefit from filing a lawsuit without having to prove damages.

During Tuesday’s committee hearing, Abramson said that he had represented clients in the energy industry, but that most of the elected leaders also sponsored or voted on legislation that was in their area of expertise.

“We have legislators that are pharmacists that bring pharmacist’s bills. Farmers that brings farmer’s bills,” said Abramson. “That’s how the process works. There is nothing wrong with it.”

Abramson also said the opposition was attempting to manipulate media sources to put pressure on legislators.

Shortly after passage of Abramson’s reform bill, plaintiff attorney Don Carmouche of Baton Rouge-based Talbot, Carmouche & Marcello filed an ethics violation complaint against Abramson.

The complaint filed with the Louisiana Ethics Administration Program claims Abramson had a financial incentive to pass reform legislation that would benefit the energy industry.

Abramson is a partner in New Orleans-based firm Lisko & Lewis which provides defense for the energy and natural resources industry.

Carmouche’s firm represents landowners who claim their land was polluted by oil drilling.

“What it shows is this is not about protecting landowners rights at all. This is about protecting legacy lawyer profits,” said Melissa Landry, Executive Director of Louisiana Lawsuit Abuse Watch.

“Personally, if I were a landowner I would be embarrassed by their behavior and be looking for new representation.”

In addition, Carmouche’s firm has been attempting to depose LSU researcher Dr. David Dismukes who authored a study linking legacy lawsuits to $6.8 billion lost by the state over the past eight years.

Dismukes’s attorneys called the deposition an “attempt to chill academic freedom.”

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State Rep. Neil Abramson says he gets it. Owners of land damaged long ago by oil drilling activities don’t want to give the state Department of Natural Resources the lead clean-up authority in “legacy lawsuits.”

Generally, oilfield operators want the first step of any lawsuit seeking recompense for past environmental damage to include the state agency .

Oil company officials say involving DNR at the beginning would speed cleanups because the companies won’t get bogged down with the other issues swirling around the lawsuits filed by landowners. “The rub is they want the trial before the actual cleanup,” Chris Johns said of the people who sue oil companies. The former U.S. congressman heads Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, a Baton Rouge-based trade association.

Many people who live on or own the allegedly damaged land counter that giving DNR primary jurisdiction would allow oil and gas companies further opportunity to drag their feet while providing them ammunition to better their chances of winning the cases in district courts.

“When you peel away all the rhetoric, that’s what they want,” said Jimmy Faircloth, the Pineville lawyer who represents some of the state’s largest private landowners. Faircloth is Gov. Bobby Jindal’s former executive counsel.

House Bill 618 is backed by the oil companies and is the first of a dozen or so “legacy lawsuit” measures to advance out of committee.

HB618 would allow oilfield operators to admit responsibility for the necessary cleanup without admitting to other problems alleged in a lawsuit. The admission would then allow the state to decide what is necessary to clean the mess. DNR’s cleanup plan could then be submitted to a jury if the case continues to court on the other issues, such as whether the cleanup was enough.

Abramson, a New Orleans Democrat, added a phrase in HB618 that specifically says the courts would retain primary jurisdiction even after DNR creates and imposes its plan to handle the well sites, refuse ponds, and production and storage areas that have never been cleaned up.

Abramson, who defends oil and gas companies in “legacy lawsuits” for a New Orleans law firm, drafted a second measure, House Bill 460, that would rewrite give the state Department of Environmental Quality authority to evaluate and oversee remediation of the land.

Landowners say DNR is allowed to issue variances from the legal cleanup standards, meaning the agency can decide that “mostly clean” is good enough under the circumstances.

Much of the DNR’s Office of Conservation relies on the regulatory and permit fees paid by oilfield operators. Also, there is a documented history of coziness between state oilfield regulators and the energy exploration industry.

Documents show that though they were following legal and acceptable practices at the time, oil companies were well aware, as far back as the 1930s, of the damage they were causing.

More to the point, however, are documents that show how complicit state government officials were in diverting attention and even covering up the severity of the situation.

For instance, an Aug. 30, 1984 memo by J.P. Batchelor, who in 1988 would become Commissioner of Conservation, while working for Amoco Production Company recommended donating the drilling pits to landowners for use as “duck or fish ponds.”

Regulations were about to go into effect that would increase costs for testing and filling in the pits. The donations would relieve Amoco of those costs, Batchelor wrote.

Then there is the April 24, 1940 Department of Conservation report that points out that a subsidiary of The Texas Company, now called Texaco Inc., paid the Conservation agent “all year round” regardless of whether the agent performed any duties.

Abramson says times have changed — nobody alleges this kind activity these days — but memories remain.

“I hear that, the landowners who say they are uncomfortable with DNR. I get it,” Abramson said.

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A Louisiana House panel Tuesday advanced legislation that would change how litigation would unfold over the cleanup of old oilfield sites.

House Bill 618, which was backed by energy companies and opposed by owners of land where the environmental damage is found, was approved on a 10-2 vote by the House Committee on Civil Law and Procedure. It is the first of more than a dozen measures involving “legacy lawsuits” to advance out of a legislative committee.

Years ago, drillers followed practices — legal and acceptable at the time — that caused damage to the land where they were working. Over the years the land often was sold and resold but the well sites, production and storage areas were never cleaned up.

Operators are willing to clean the sites but want to avoid legal exposure to other claims that could cost additional millions of dollars, testified Gifford Briggs, vice president of Louisiana Oil and Gas Association.

The lawsuits, whose count he puts at 273, delay cleanup while stifling exploration in the state, he said.

Landowners opposed HB618, countering that the bill would give oil and gas companies further opportunity to drag their feet while providing them with ammunition to better win the cases in court, said Jimmy Faircloth, a Pineville lawyer who represents some of the state’s largest private landowners.

“It’s not about making it work, it’s about leverage,” Faircloth said. The mechanisms outlined in HB618 would expose state employees to the lobbying of some of the world’s largest corporations, he said.

State Rep. Neil Abramson, D-New Orleans, committee chairman and HB681 sponsor, said the legislation would allow oilfield operators to admit to being responsible for the necessary cleanup without admitting to other problems. The admission would then allow the state to decide what is necessary to clean the mess, he said.

Under the provisions of HB618, the cleanup plan approved by the state Department of Natural Resources, or DNR, could then be submitted to a jury if the case continues to court on other issues, such as whether the cleanup was enough or whether the damage to the land caused other losses that should be recompensed.

Opponents said they were concerned because DNR could allow exceptions to the state standard that would allow for a lesser cleanup than sought by the landowners. Attempts were made to amend the legislation to require the landowner’s consent before the state agency could deviate from the regulatory cleanup standards.

State Rep. John Bel Edwards, D-Amite, said introducing into evidence at trial of a state-approved plan would prejudice jurors against the landowners’ arguments that the land should be cleaned to higher standard.

“Your amendment is going to slow down cleaning up the property,” Abramson responded.

Edwards’ amendment died on a vote of three for and nine against. Similar amendment attempts failed by similar margins.

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Lawmakers used a public hearing Monday to ask the oil and gas industry and the some of the state’s wealthiest landowners to fashion a compromise in the long-running fight over lawsuits filed concerning environmental damage left behind by energy exploration and production.

“How can anyone think seven or eight members of a legislative body can work out an issue this complicated?” Sen. Gerald Long, R-Natchitoches, told a roomful of oil and gas executives, business lobbyists, landowners and plaintiffs attorneys.

Long convened a joint hearing of the Legislature’s two natural resources committees in an attempt to force the two sides to air publicly the positions they have staked out privately during weeks of negotiations over so-called “legacy lawsuits.” Long’s plea underscores the political intrigue of a dispute that pits big money against big money. On one side is the state’s most powerful industry, from international energy giants like Shell and Chevron to independent, Louisiana-based producers. On the other: Louisiana’s biggest landowners, corporations like Weyerhauser and individuals like Roy O. Martin III.

Prominent players on both sides are among key contributors to Gov. Bobby Jindal and legislators in both parties. The matter has drawn the ire of U.S. Sen. David Vitter, who has argued on behalf of the energy industry and accused Jindal of coddling plaintiff attorneys.

Lawmakers have filed more than a dozen bills on the matter, but those have been sidelined as the two sides attempt resolution, with Gov. Bobby Jindal’s Secretary of Natural Resources Scott Angelle acting as mediator.

Angelle did not testify Monday, though Long said he expected representatives of the agency, along with the Department of Environmental Quality, to address the legislative panels when they convene next week. “Eventually we are going to have to hear these bills that have been filed, ” he said.

Meanwhile, the senator said he believed the two sides can agree on changes to the complex web of litigation law and environmental regulations that govern how landowners can pursue certain environmental claims against producers that leased their land.

Yet testimony Monday underscored key fissures. Primary among them: Whether state regulators should, before a court makes any determination, certify a dollar-value and cleanup plan for certain environmental effects for which industry accepts responsibility, with the state judgment then being used in court by an industry defendant.

The energy industry argues that Act 312 of 2006, the last legislative attempt to settle the issue, has created a morass of litigation that stifles exploration and production. “Louisiana is becoming a less attractive place for us to invest because of hundreds of legacy lawsuits which seek absurd damages, ” Joseph Frost, an executive of Hilcorp Energy Co., told senators and representatives.

David Russell, president of McGowan Working Partners Inc., decried lawsuits that name as defendants a succession of firms that may have worked an oil field over many years.

“I feel like the Christmas turkey, ” he said. “The plaintiffs want to carve me up and then my co-defendants are out there settling; they wanna carve me up, too.”

The landowners suggest they could endorse changes to Act 312, but their top advocate, Alexandria attorney Jimmy Faircloth, said the industry effectively wants to scale back landowners’ rights for a fair judgment in court. The state Department of Natural Resources, he said, should not be compelled to intervene in private litigation. The state already can choose to intervene in Act 312 lawsuits, Faircloth noted, and the agency already plays a role in developing mitigation plans that a court ultimately must approve.

Faircloth, who previously worked as Jindal’s executive counsel, said defendants should be able to clean a site and submit their actions as part of their defense, but not with a mandated state role. He told lawmakers that such a mandate would “open the door” for industry to strong-arm an executive branch to issue industry-friendly judgments. He said they already are doing that in the current debate.

“I think DNR’s absence here today speaks volumes, ” he said.

The oil and gas lobby also has misrepresented Act 312 as a “trial lawyer bonanza, ” Faircloth said, given that the law deals only with environmental claims covered by state rules and regulation concerning exploration and production. Other claims, such as alleged crop damage , have always been litigated outside the scope of Act 312 and should not be at issue, Faircloth said.

Sen. J.P. Morrell, D-New Orleans, lashed out at Faircloth’s assertion that the business lobby and energy industry have misrepresented the existing Act 312 landscape. “I’ve gotten propaganda from both sides. Both sides have lobbyists. Both sides have mouthpieces. Both sides pressure legislators. That is part of the legislative process.”

Morrell has filed an industry-backed bill that would require DNR to issue a finding on a remediation plan for any producer that accepts responsibility for environmental damages.

Disparate approaches from the two chairmen underscored the long odds of an easy resolution. Long has filed a bill on Faircloth’s behalf. His House counterpart, Rep. Gordon Dove, R-Houma, peppered Faircloth with questions: “Isn’t this all about getting experts supporting your dollar figure?” Dove asked. “Be honest.”

While Long’s and Dove’s respective committees have shelved proposals amid ongoing talks, the House Civil Law and Procedure Committee is scheduled to take up a legacy lawsuit proposal from Rep. Neil Abramson, D-New Orleans, today.

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