TLR advocates for reforms that actually work. After years of limited access to healthcare driven by frivolous medical liability lawsuits, a TLR-advocated bill in 2003 changed the landscape. As soon as it came into law, medical liability insurance costs dropped dramatically for doctors and hospitals, allowing them to practice medicine in Texas without fear of unwarranted lawsuits. Doctors immediately began moving to the state and hospitals expanded care. Today, Texas is home to world-class medical facilities, in part thanks to TLR and tort reform.

That same bill made numerous other common-sense improvements. For example, before 2003, plaintiff’s lawyers routinely settled class action lawsuits by accepting their multi-million-dollar fees in cash, while their clients received product discount coupons. Today, coupon settlements have disappeared in Texas thanks to TLR. If getting paid in coupons is good enough for their clients, it’s good enough for the lawyers, too.

TLR focuses on fairness. In 2005, TLR worked to end a plaintiff’s lawyer-driven lawsuit mill to generate mass asbestos litigation. Clients were screened by technicians hired by the lawyers and told they had lung scarring similar to that caused by inhaling asbestos. This resulted in tens of thousands of lawsuits filed in Texas, each typically naming a hundred or more plaintiffs and defendants. It seemed no company was immune.

TLR proposed giving courts scientifically sound medical criteria to identify truly injured plaintiffs. To ensure fairness, Texans suffering from an asbestos-caused cancer jumped to the front of the line for trial. Plaintiffs who weren’t suffering an active disease could voluntarily dismiss the lawsuit, and re-up it at any point in the future if actually diagnosed with an asbestos-caused disease. This ended asbestos litigation abuse in Texas, eliminated billions of dollars of contingent liabilities on companies’ balance sheets, and created model legislation for other states to adopt.

TLR seeks to end obvious abuses, not trivial mistakes. Before 2017, lawyers sent case runners door-to-door after hailstorms, recruiting clients to sue their insurance companies—before a claim was even filed—for alleged underpayment of claims. The motivation for this lawyer-driven abuse was to recover fees from the insurance companies, and it caused the cost of homeowner’s insurance to skyrocket while the availability of insurance declined. TLR asked the Legislature to address this misconduct by putting the plaintiff’s lawyers’ fees at risk when they engaged in these abusive practices.

TLR’s work helps Texas remain the best place in the U.S. to do business. In 2023, TLR championed the creation of a business court in Texas to quickly resolve large commercial disputes—an economic development priority for Gov. Abbott. We also championed the creation of a new court of appeals to hear cases involving the state, which had been a priority for Attorney General Paxton in the past. Because of TLR’s efforts, both courts will begin operations later this year.