Groups Gear Up Against No-Fault, Tort-Reform Bids

Anticipating a flurry of political signature gathering over the holiday weekend, leaders of 75 consumer, labor and civic groups Thursday urged voters to say no to three proposed initiatives that would establish a “pure” no-fault auto insurance system in California and revamp the state’s legal torts system.

Aimed for the March, 1996, primary election, the proposals are sponsored by a group that includes Silicon Valley software publisher Tom Proulx, business journalist Andrew Tobias, and Voter Revolt, the organization formed to push Proposition 103, the 1988 insurance rate-reform initiative.

They contend that no-fault will cut insurance premiums and help solve California’s uninsured-driver problems. They say the legal reforms--a limit on plaintiffs lawyers’ fees and a provision requiring the loser in a suit to pay the winner’s legal costs--will restrain frivolous lawsuits that discourage business, cost jobs and are a drag on the California economy.

But the opponents who spoke up Thursday counter that the ballot measures “would foreclose access to the courts for consumers who have been injured by reckless drivers, maimed by dangerous products or swindled by high-rollers,” in the words of Harry Snyder, co-director of the West Coast office of Consumers Union.

The opponents, representing a wide range of social and consumer interests, include Proposition 103 author Harvey Rosenfield, who founded Voter Revolt and disavows its current stand; Joe Hicks of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Southern California; Selwyn Whitehead of the Economic Empowerment Foundation in Oakland, and leaders of such groups as the Green Party of California, the California Coalition of Hispanic Organizations, AIDS Project East Bay, the United Farm Workers, the California Public Interest Research Group and the San Francisco AFL-CIO.