Capping ten years of reform efforts, in 2003 the Texas Legislature enacted the strongest litigation reform legislation in the nation. Two years later it passed the country’s most effective asbestos and silica litigation reforms. Given that these reforms were adopted in a state long known as a plaintiff lawyer’s paradise, other reform groups could profit by a study of the experience of the leading Texas reform group, Texans for Lawsuit Reform (TLR). This paper summarizes that experience.

As we in TLR contemplate the last twenty years of success at the ballot box and in the legislature, we should heed the age-old adage that “every success has in it the seeds of failure and every failure the seeds of success.” Napoleon observed that the greatest danger is at the moment of victory. So while all of us in TLR are pleased at our role in helping change Texas from the “Wild West of Litigation” to the state that has accomplished the most comprehensive civil justice reform, we know that we are one of many travelers on the road of tort reform and that there is much left to do. We appreciate the elected officials who have enacted the legislative reforms, the wise judges who have adopted sound rules to implement the reforms, and the business and professional associations and citizens across Texas who have joined with TLR in moving our state toward a more balanced, fair and predictable civil justice system.