Legislative Wrap-UP (Continued from page 29)
& Marbury attorney Ken Thompson who was a very close personal friend of Del- egate Fulton’s. So, House Bill 633 came of the work group gutted and meaning- less.
At this point, we were faced with a dif- ficult decision about whether to work to have the bill killed in the House Economic matters Committee. Our lead lobbyist, Dan Doherty, sought out consultation with Chairman Tommy Bromwell of the Senate Finance Committee.
Chairman
Bromwell assured our lead lobbyist that the bill would not be altered on the Sen- ate side and that that he would work to get rid of the amendments that were picked up on the House side. This was consistent with the hearing which had taken place in Senator Bromwell’s com- mittee in which he came out as a forceful advocate of the bill in its originally drafted form. Based on the lobbyists’ recommen- dation, we did not work to kill the bill in Economic Matters. The lobbyists worked hard, instead, to have the ECM members remove the amendments adopted by the work group stripped off of the bill, realiz- ing that if the effort was not successful,
“AMFS
we would be relying on Senator Bromwell. The effort was not successful, and the full ECM committee adopted the bill as amendment by its work group. The bill then passed the House floor. Unfortunately, we were about to be
“spun” by Chairman Bromwell. As noted, we had had an excellent hearing in his Finance Committee before the ECM vote. We had the benefit of Peter Holland and the Corburns’ testimony as well as testi- mony of clients of Keith Franz’s cleints, the McGonnells: and the testimony of Evelyn Darden’s clients, Mr. & Mrs. Frank M. Mayne. The hearing was extremely compelling. Chairman Bromwell spoke out very softly in favor of the bill as is, including his coverage for non-economic damages. However, by the time the bill came up for a vote in the Senate Finance Committee, Chairman Bromwell had completely reversed course. The Senate Finance Committee is the only commit- tee in the Legislature which allows lobbyists to attend voting sessions. Dan Doherty was present at the voting session. Chairman Bromwell led the charge to adopt the amendments incorporated by the House. The only positive develop- ment was that the bill would be expanded to apply to claims by minor children over
the $20,000/$40,000 minimums. As a reminder, parent child immunity was ab- rogated last year in motor vehicle cases but only up to the mandatory $20,000/ $40,000 limits. Our lead lobbyist, Dan Doherty had a frank confrontation with Chairman Bromwell concerning his reversal. Chair- man Bromwell proposed at that point a “triple option” approach where persons could chose between having coverage as it existed now, having coverage up to the limits for all types of damages, and hav- ing coverage up to the limits for only economic damages only. Additionally, language concerning future lost wages and collateral sources would be fixed. That discussion took place on a Friday. Dan Doherty and I worked feverishly over the weekend to try to draft language which would accommodate the suggestions by the Chairman. We also sought out opin- ions from attorneys concerning affects of proposed language. No less than about 30 hours of effort went into drafting amendments over the weekend. I attended the next voting session the following Tuesday with Dan Doherty.
I
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was permitted to speak at the voting ses- sion by Chairman Bromwell. Once again, he voted against us. Chairman Bromwell asked for a vote on whether or not eco- nomic damages should be kept in the bill. The committee had ten members at that point. There were six yes votes for keep- ing noneconomic damages in the bill, but Chairman Bromwell declared the measure had lost..
When his legislative counsel advised him they had miscounted the votes, Senator Hafer promptly changed his vote to a nay, and Chairman Bromwell then declared for the second time that the measure had not passed. I saw it with my own eyes. To his credit, Chairman Bromwell re-
versed course and allied himself with us on the Senate floor on the last day of the session. Senator Chris Van Hollen, to whom we owe gratitude, proposed amendments to add noneconomic dam- ages in a triple option format, and remove the collateral source and future lost wage problems while still applying the bill to parent-child claims over 20/40.
Chair-
man Bromwell concurred with the amendments, and the bill , as amended passed the Senate. A disastrous bill had been turned back into a good bill and now was on its way to the House at 2:00 p.m. on the last day of the session. Our adversaries, of course, were not
pleased. We worked very hard to try to persuade the House ECM committee to concur with the amended bill. We sought
Summer 2002
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