Both houses of the Wisconsin Legislature stand adjourned for the remainder of the 2021-22 legislative session and are not expected to reconvene until January 2023. Throughout the session, the Wisconsin Civil Justice Council worked tirelessly to advance civil liability reforms and prevent new civil causes of action from becoming law. Thank you for your continued support of our organization.

Early this session, we worked to successfully enact broad, reasonable protections for businesses and other entities from predatory COVID-related lawsuits. 2021 Wis. Act 4 provides civil immunity from ordinary negligence claims related to COVID exposure for Wisconsin employers, governments, schools, and other entities as well as their employees, agents, and independent contractors, provided the claim is not due to an act or omission involving reckless or wanton conduct or intentional misconduct.

Unlike other states, our protections do not sunset and our language protects not only against SARS-CoV-2, but also against any viral strain originating from SARS-CoV-2, ensuring our protections apply as this novel virus continues to mutate. Regarding this victory, Tiger Joyce, president of the American Tort Reform Association, said:

Our protections were initially vetoed by Gov. Evers along with a broader package of COVID-related measures. We then worked with Republican legislative leaders to attach our desired protections to an Unemployment Insurance reform measure desired by Gov. Evers who, as part of this measure, signed our requested language into law.

This session, we continued to hold the line on creating new civil causes of action. In his 2021-23 budget bill, Gov. Evers proposed creating new civil causes of action for employment discrimination, unfair honesty or genetic testing, broadband service denial, and unnecessarily summoning a law enforcement officer. Gov. Evers also proposed restoring the ability of private parties to bring a qui tam action against a person for making a false claim with the state. WCJC worked with legislators to ensure that these concerning policies were removed early in the budget process.

After the unrest in the summer of 2020, Assembly Speaker Vos created a task force to discuss and make recommendations to the Legislature for policing reforms and other measures to address law enforcement-related racial disparities.

The Democratic co-chair of the Task Force, Rep. Stubbs, is a proponent of creating a new civil cause of action for unnecessarily summoning law enforcement, similar to what Gov. Evers proposed in his budget recommendations. Her legislation is very broad, including as a ground for a civil suit feeling embarrassed or humiliated when law enforcement is called. WCJC has opposed previous versions of this legislation and opposed this version, too.

We worked to ensure the Republican co-chair of the Task Force, Assembly Majority Leader Steineke, understood our opposition to creating this new civil cause of action. We were pleased that a new civil cause of action was not included in the Task Force’s report and was not pursued by the Assembly. We also asked for and received assurances from key Senate Republicans that if the Assembly ultimately did pursue creating a new civil cause of action, they would oppose such efforts in the Senate.

We have been pursuing the creation of reasonable consumer protections related to “lawsuit lending,” a nonrecourse loan whereby plaintiffs, in essence, get an “advance” on a claim with repayment of the advance contingent on the outcome of the case. A bipartisan group of legislators, led by Reps. Tusler & McGuire and Sens. Wimberger & Roys, introduced our legislation and the bills were heard by committees in both houses.

Unfortunately, we ran into headwinds on these bills as session drew to a close. For example, despite having the votes in committee, including a majority of the Republicans on the committee, the chairperson of Assembly Committee on Consumer Affairs declined to hold a vote on the bill. We will discuss with our board of directors our strategy for the 2023-24 legislative session.