The greatest risk is that just as businesses struggle to bring back jobs, our strength will be sapped by a new wave of lawsuits. The plaintiffs’ bar has spent tens of millions of dollars to win a majority of state houses across America. Now the plaintiffs’ bar is preparing to invest millions more in political campaigns, advertising, and lobbying to deepen their political influence and win dramatically expanded liability laws.

On the other side, the recent bad economy has left liability  reform advocates in tough shape.  If a new round of anti-business liability laws is passed, entrepreneurs and corporations will have far less to invest.  As a result, you can expect to see further erosion to the economic underpinnings of a robust U.S. economy.  If that happens, we will all wind up paying the price.

The  Foundation for Fair Civil Justice (FFCJ) is working to stop this from happening by educating Americans about the high social costs of abusive, predatory lawsuits. It will motivate citizens to seek liability  reforms by articulating how much is at stake.  And it will empower citizens with useful tools for protecting themselves from becoming unwitting victims of expanded liability, and to use in taking democratic action in their states.

“We are telling business that it is time to beyond the traditional path of seeking legislative reform in Washington,” says Bernie Marcus, the former CEO of Home Depot, long-time legal reform champion, and co-founder of the FFCJ.  “We need to get into the field, to the very grassroots of our culture.  I foresee this as the beginning of a deep and long-running social and cultural movement.”

To Educate

In its education mission, FFCJ is a child of its time, taking full advantage of the range of today’s communications channels.  It is combining online outreach tools, social networks, and other web-based technologies with more traditional television and radio “earned media” news coverage. These public-education efforts will be targeted to six key constituencies: Municipal and community leaders, small and family business, medical providers, investors and entrepreneurs, consumers, and retirees.

“We are first the in making a nationwide appeal to small business, charitable foundations, civic organizations, volunteer groups and the broader public, while giving them the knowledge resources to reduce their exposure to the risk of abusive lawsuits” says Marcus, likening the Foundation’s mission to steering a cruise ship, attempting to make a steady course correction in America’s system of civil justice.

FFCJ’s leaders bring to this task a rare combination of deep policy understanding and business acumen with a flair for promoting public awareness with humor—an ability on full display in its recent “Wacky Warning Label Contest.”  (This year’s winner was a label that reads, “Not for use on moving vehicles”—for a portable toilet seat designed to attach to a vehicles trailer hitch.)  The efforts of the new organization, though wide-ranging, are geared toward a single overarching goal:  To change America’s excessive litigation culture.  Through FFCJ’s media efforts, news coverage of the contest reached more than 50 million Americans.

The centerpiece of the FFCJs public education campaign is a website, with many “liability basics” resource toolkits, radio commentaries and videos for digital and broadcast media.  (Bob Dorigo Jones, creator of the Wacky Warning Label Contest, is slated to provide a regular, 60-second “Let’s Be Fair” radio commentary on radio stations around the country.) It also includes a video program that has been accepted by PBS for broadcast on 350 affiliate stations and is expected to reach a minimum of three million viewers.

To Motivate

People need to be aware of just how unreasonable liability laws can be in many states and how severely the playing field is tilted toward the plaintiffs’ bar.   The FFCJ wants every American to understand the costs in terms of jobs that Americans lose  when a politically well-connected lobby can subvert the law for its own personal gain.

Even cases in which the putative defendant is a big corporation can have inordinate impacts on millions of citizens.  Stock values drop dramatically – billions in value lost in a day – under just a threat of a major lawsuit.  On issues such as global warming,  plaintiff’s lawyers have filed  lawsuits against major energy and manufacturing companies on the chance that the “right” judge (read this to mean plaintiffs’ lawyer-friendly) will find causation – a litigation pattern that was developed in the decades-long tobacco and asbestos lawsuits.  Eventually, somebody pays.

In so many ways, it is the retiree, the individual investor, and the consumer who pay the price for meritless  lawsuits. Every American worker and consumer needs to know what we’re paying.

To Empower

Another set of efforts will impart practical information—what he FFCJ calls the “liability basics”—to empower small organizations to avoid being unwittingly targeted as easy prey for the plaintiffs’ bar and to show how to use the democratic process to effect reform in each state.

“Our pieces will be entertaining, but they are not entertainment,” says Steve Nowlan, president of FFCJ.  “The takeaway will be to give our viewers practical ideas about how they can manage their legal risks and exposure.  We want to educate and empower business and community organizations to reduce these risks and to decrease the chances they will be caught between a plaintiff’s lawyer and the deep pockets of their insurers.  And when a lawsuit happens?  We want people and organizations to understand how to take action and to avoid being intimidated.”

The FFCJ’s “toolkits,” designed for small businesses and organizations, will be distributed by 250 Fair Civil Justice “fellows”–retired attorneys who know how to help unwitting victims avoid predatory lawsuits.  Collectively, they will make more than 2,500 presentations a year to community organizations.

This is a small army, one that will offer concrete assistance to more than 50,000 American business and community leaders. As the Foundation’s fellows do their work, word will spread to direct more people to our website materials. The fellows’ in-person presentations and educational briefings will be backed by two- to five-minute messages narrated by popular personalities that will be available for download on the FFCJ website.

With the goal of an alert citizenry that holds the government accountable for its performance, the FFCJ is setting out to educate the public about democratic action citizens can take in electoral choices to uphold higher standards of judicial conduct.  In public, private and parochial classrooms, the Foundation’s Rule-of-Law Civil Justice Student Initiative will surpass the one-dimensional treatment of these issues in standard civics textbooks to expose students to the views of elected and judicial leaders.  This national initiative will provide educators with rule-of-law curriculum, videos and teachers’ guides focusing on state Supreme Courts, state attorneys general, governors, and state legislative leaders. The three-year goal of the program is to be requested by more than 50,000 educators across the United States.  In all, more than 3 million students will be reached.

The first round of Rule-of-Law material focuses on the role of the state Supreme Court, and features interviews with former Michigan Chief Justice Cliff Taylor, Alabama Justice Harold F. See, Jr., and others, centered on  the important role of Supreme Courts in interpreting laws based upon the  rule-of-law.

The second four-unit package focuses on the role of state attorneys general and features interviews with former Virginia Attorney General Robert McDonnell, and Attorneys General Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania and Mike Cox of Michigan. This discussion focuses on their duty to “preserve and protect” in the context of fostering entrepreneurship and health business environment.

In all these efforts, FFCJ will reach out to a coalition of more than 65 national and state organizations—including such well-respected non-profit groups as the Pacific Research Institute, the Manhattan Institute, the Southeastern Legal Foundation, and the Washington Legal Foundation.  It will draw on this active network to leverage resources for state and national liability reform.  The Foundation will work to consolidate the issue, research, communications and technology expertise of marketing and communications professionals around the country.

Above all, the Foundation will strive to educate the public, media, judges and policymakers about the central role America’s civil justice system plays in protecting free enterprise, economic recovery and the American way of life.

Steve Hantler is cofounder and chairman of the Foundation for Fair Civil Justice.

New evidence shows litigation reform works, but reformers are fighting a new political landscape.

A look at the litigation picture in each state and how conducive it is to growth and job creation, prepared by the American Justice Partnership in collaboration with Directorship.

Speaking to an audience of board members, advisers, and corporate governance experts, Fred Buenrostro, the chief executive in charge of the country’s largest public pension fund, delivered a call to action: good corporate governance is essential for aligning the interests of investors with management. Perhaps more importantly, healthy capital markets require good corporate governance, he says, if they are to serve the needs of investors and customers. His conclusion: “Good corporate governance improves share price and ultimately reduces the cost of capital.”