The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry will continue to fight for tort reform and increased transparency and modernization of the state’s court system, according to Will Green, LABI’s newly selected president and CEO.
Green previously served as president of the 350-member Louisiana Automobile Dealers Association, and he held the position of director of civil justice reform and employee relations at LABI for more than two years. His selection as LABI’s chief executive was announced Sept. 26 after a months-long national search, according to Jude Melville, LABI’s board chairman, who said Green represents a new generation of leadership for the business association.
“As our state’s primary advocate for the uplifting power of free enterprise, LABI has been a decades-long force for good – this choice ensures we can continue to positively impact the lives of Louisianans for years to come,” Melville said in a prepared statement.
In addition to heading the auto dealers association for more than seven years, Green previously served as an assistant attorney general with the Louisiana Workforce Commission’s Office of Workers’ Compensation and was in-house counsel for the Louisiana Workers’ Compensation Corp., a private, nonprofit mutual insurance company.
“Tort reform is absolutely one of those things that we're going to look at,” he told the Louisiana Record. “Frivolous lawsuits that result in what a lot of people refer to as tort tax is really one of those things hindering Louisiana businesses and stopping growth and expansion. It’s one of the things I worked on when I was at LABI, and it’s one of the things that I consider to be a key piece of the puzzle moving forward.”
Green stressed that with a new governor, a new insurance commissioner and new state lawmakers coming aboard in 2024, LABI has an opportunity to move forward on working with its partners to improve the state’s legal climate.
“It's important we get with the new leadership,” he said. “States that have done meaningful reform, they haven't done just piecemeal things here and there."
States that have enacted significant civil litigation reforms have done so with consistent actions and multi-year efforts, according to Green.
“There's probably no silver bullet to tort reform,” he said, “and so we’re kind of gathering all the information from the stakeholders, and we plan on putting together an agenda that we know will help reduce unnecessary frivolous lawsuits.”
LABI efforts to encourage the court system to modernize and to make judicial decisions and disciplinary efforts more transparent will continue, according to Green.
“We plan on going in and having broad discussions and getting with the stakeholders ... to better modernize and better improve our state's legal climate," he said, noting that Louisiana’s workers’ compensation system costs are among the highest in the nation and place financial burdens on businesses in the state.
With polls showing that Louisianans favor less public spending and lower taxes, LABI needs to offer solutions that improve the state’s business climate and provide a more balanced legal and regulatory system in order to attract new business ventures to the state, Green said.
“We need to unwind the burdensome and complicated tax climate we have,” he said.