Quayle Decries ‘Litigation Explosion’ : Campaign: The vice president details plans to reform the civil justice system. He receives a warm reception from Missouri lawyers’ group.

Vice President Dan Quayle, often at odds with lawyers over his calls for reforming the civil justice system, received a warm ovation for his proposals Friday from the Missouri Bar Assn.

Addressing several hundred lawyers at their annual meeting, Quayle decried “the litigation explosion” in the United States, saying it makes the court system “less able to respond to the needs of ordinary Americans.”

Quayle said the Bush Administration wants Congress to enact a series of reforms “to make the civil justice system more cost effective and to speed the pace of resolving disputes.”

Included among the reforms are proposals to put a ceiling on punitive damage awards that cost American businesses billions of dollars annually and cause doctors to pay ever-larger malpractice insurance premiums, raising the cost of health care for average citizens, he said.

“I don’t want to be provocative,” he told the lawyers, who responded with good-natured laughter. Quayle noted that both he and his wife, Marilyn, are lawyers, having met in law school at Indiana University. “A significant majority of lawyers support our proposals for cheaper and quicker resolution of lawsuits,” he said.

Quayle’s appearance before the bar association was part of a daylong swing through Missouri, a crucial border state that has gone Republican in the last three presidential elections. He plans to campaign in California early next week, visiting Palo Alto, Los Angeles and Fresno.

In his bar association remarks, Quayle said that opponents of his reform measures are mainly civil trial lawyers who represent plaintiffs suing manufacturers of consumer products. He described these as “highly organized and politically active” attorneys and suggested that many of them support Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton.

He cited a July 10 letter from David Williams, president of the Arkansas Trial Lawyers Assn. and a longtime friend of Clinton’s, that said in part: “I can never remember an occasion when he (Clinton) failed to do the right thing where we trial lawyers were concerned.”

A segment of the audience began applauding, but there also was some laughter.

The problem with the civil justice system, Quayle said, is that U.S. businesses “often pay 15 or 20 times more for product liability insurance than do their competitors in Germany and Japan.”

And excessive civil litigation, he said, also affects national health care. He cited figures from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists that in 1990, 12% of their members gave up the practice of medicine due to liability concerns.

Quayle said 92% of all civil suits are settled or disposed of prior to trial. Among Bush Administration reforms, “we want to promote early settlements and the use of voluntary dispute resolution,” he said.