May 12, 2009 9:05 AM

LEE WOODS ON REPUBLICANS AND ENTERGY

"Texans for Lawsuit Reform and Texas Civil Justice League have tried repeatedly over the last decade to pass legislation accomplishing what the Court accomplished with the stroke of a pen. What they could not achieve through the legislative process they succeeded in changing with the Court."

Anyone who knows Republican consultant/lobbyist Lee Woods knows that regardless of his clients, Woods never leaves his political beliefs at the door. So when he wrote the following on the Texas Supreme Court's "creativity" in rendering the Entergy case, Republicans took notice.

As disclosed at the end of the piece, Woods lobbies on behalf of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association. We leave it to the reader to evaluate Woods' arguments.

The piece was distributed to members yesterday since the Entergy bill is set on Wednesday's calendar:

***ENTERGY V. SUMMERS: WHY THE TEXAS LEGISLATURE HAS NEVER GRANTED STATUTORY EMPLOYER STATUS AND IMMUNITY TO PREMISE OWNERS by Lee Woods

"Shortly after 1:00 PM on March 23, 2005, an explosion occurred at the BP Refinery in Texas City, immediately killing 15 contract workers and injuring hundreds more. U.S. Chemical Safety Board investigators concluded, “Organizational and safety deficiencies at all levels of the BP Corporation caused the explosion,” which they said was the worst industrial accident in the United States since 1990.

"Following the explosion on that very day, Representative Joe Nixon, Chairman of the House Civil Practices Committee, took to the floor of the house to announce that he was pulling down his legislation that would, if passed, have granted statutory employer status to premise owners like BP, thus immunizing them from lawsuits from family members of the 15 dead workers and the hundreds of injured as result of the explosion.

"Despite the fact that numerous bills have been filed to grant premise owners immunity since 1995, and despite the fact it has been one of the key legislative priorities of Texans for Lawsuit Reform, Texas Civil Justice League* and a host of other industry organizations for years, and unbeknownst to anyone in the Texas Legislature, the *Texas Supreme Court*** ruled on April 3, 2009 in a stunning display of judicial activism, that those protections have been afforded to premise owners since 1917."

The full piece can be found here.