July 6, 2007

New Hampshire governor John Lynch has vetoed a trial-lawyer-sponsored bill that would have exposed multiple defendants to greater shares of each others' responsibility for an injury. The bill was sponsored by Sen. David Gottesman, D-Nashua and himself a trial lawyer; "The trial lawyers lobby helped financially elect the first Democratically controlled Legislature in more than a century." (Nashua Telegraph, Union Leader). The bill "would have allowed the jury to allocate fault only between those that remain parties to the lawsuit at the conclusion of the trial. It would have prohibited the jury from apportioning fault to those who carry significant degrees of fault for the plaintiff's injuries, but who either settled claims prior to conclusion of the lawsuit, or who are not parties to a particular lawsuit for other reasons." (Insurance Journal).