Thursday, January 05, 2023

Insurance Mouthpiece THOMAS LEEK Wants to Erase Tort Plaintiff's Civil and Constitutional Rights. (Daytona Beach News Journal)

Chief Legal Officer for a nest of insurance oligopolists (Foundation Risk Partners), State Representative THOMAS LEEK wants to be your State Senator, running for State Senator TRAVIS JAMES HUTSON's Senate seat. (HUTSON is term-limited  LEEK works for corporate oligarchs and is now the new Chair of the Florida House Appropriations Committee.)

LEEK is a Stetson University College of Law graduate.

It's hard to understand why:

A. LEEK thinks a state law could curb Americans with Disabilities Act lawsuits in federal court?  Are you kidding me?

B. LEEK wants to limit attorney advertising, a matter of First Amendment rights already ruled on repeatedly by the U.S. Supreme Court? Are you kidding me?

C. LEEK did not identify himself as the Chief Legal Officer of Foundation Risk Partners, but only demurely as a state representative?  

As a conflicted insurance cartel mouthpiece and propagandist LEEK reeks.

As the corporate mouthpiece who wants to replace developer-Senator TRAVIS JAMES HUTSON, is LEEK   no more morally qualified for the gig than hubristic misanthrope HUTSON?

As they say in East Tennessee, LEEK "bears watching'."

From Daytona Beach News Journal:




STATE REP. TOM LEEK: Work together to shut down abuse of the legal system

Staff Writer
The Daytona Beach News-Journal

The Americans with Disabilities Act has single-handedly transformed the way we treat people with disabilities in this country. But in my 20 years of private practice, I had to watch as a handful of plaintiffs’ lawyers stole the ADA from the very people it was designed to protect and turned it into their own little ATM, spitting out cash every time they cranked up their lawsuit machine. These lawyers file carbon-copy lawsuits against small businesses and property owners by the hundreds, and take tens of thousands of dollars from hard working folks all over this state, and that’s not right.

[OUR VIEW: In Volusia, Flagler counties, a conflict of access]

My first bill as member of the Florida House of Representatives was a bill to curb abusive ADA lawsuits. Now, after three sessions, I can say that I’ve filed (and mostly passed) bills to take the abuse out of our legal system. Don’t get me wrong. I am not anti-plaintiff’s bar. The plaintiff’s bar is the reason kids’ pajamas are not flammable, and the reason light poles don’t fall over and kill people as the result of a five-mph tap from a car. The plaintiff’s bar is largely the reason corporate greed hasn’t endangered more people in commerce.

But who are we kidding? Our system is no longer just about righting some wrong. It’s no longer just about punishing the perpetrator. Our legal system has become about “how much” some attorney “got me.” Just look at the billboards up and down our roads. It’s become the lottery for the injured, and frankly, the not-so-injured. And, it shouldn’t be that way. My goal is to restore balance and integrity to a legal system that I love.

We, as a society, need to stop the bastardization of our legal system. The courts and the Florida Bar need to police their own. The courts need to start taking action against those attorneys and who abuse the system for financial gain, and insurers whose tactics are designed to delay and stall. The Florida Bar needs to materially limit attorney advertising. And the Florida Legislature needs to continue down a path of passing meaningful tort reform. If we demand it, we will have a legal system with greater access for all, where the costs of litigation will be less, and where the time to justice will be quicker.

Leek, a Daytona Beach Republican, represents District 25 in the Florida House.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"Our legal system is no longer about righting some wrong." When has it ever been about righting some wrong? In "criminal justice," it's about how much money the state can wring out of someone through probation and attorney fees so that the accused can lessen the effect that the state has on their life once they are arrested. How does incarceration right some wrong? How do $10 phone calls at the jail and high bonds right some wrong? Then when someone has a claim in court that could result in money being paid TO and individual instead of something being taken FROM an individual by the state, then we have problems. You see, the average person is not supposed to make a dime outside of work. If something bad happens then it's time for people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. This is the conservative mentality. When you're screwed, you're screwed. Perhaps some prayer will bring you good tidings but if not it was God's will. "God puts these things on us for a reason."🤡