Under a litigation financing agreement, a company advances money to an attorney to pay the expenses of a civil suit on behalf of an injured individual. If the individual prevails, the litigation financier is repaid from the amount awarded to the individual. This bill would regulate this practice by imposing limits on how much litigation financiers can be paid and would require disclosure of the financing agreement to the court and the other parties to the suit. Under existing law, an employer can be held responsible for the death or injury of an individual caused by an employee, either on a direct basis when the employer was negligent or wanton in supervising the employee, or on a vicarious basis when the employee was acting in the scope of employment when the death or injury occurred. This bill would provide that an employer may admit in a civil suit that the employee was acting in the scope of the job and would thereby restrict the basis for the employer's exposure to damages to vicarious liability. This bill would define "noneconomic damages" in a personal injury lawsuit and put a monetary cap on the amount of noneconomic damages that may be awarded. This bill would regulate the proof required for recovery of damages for expenses for medical care provided to an injured individual in personal injury, wrongful death, product liability, and medical malpractice cases, including cases where a health care provider has agreed to be paid from an amount awarded to the individual or has sold the individual's account to a third party. This bill would further establish corresponding limits on the amount of damages recoverable for medical expenses. Under existing law, expert testimony on scientific matters may be used in a civil trial where it is based on sufficient facts and reliable principles or methods that may be reliably applied to the facts in dispute. This bill would expand these requirements to expert testimony on other technical or specialized branches of knowledge and impose an additional requirement on a party seeking to use expert testimony to demonstrate that it is more likely than not that the underlying principles used by the expert and their application to the facts of case will be reliable. This bill would change the definition of a "passenger car" from a motor vehicle that is designed to carry no more than 10 passengers to a vehicle that can carry no more than 15 passengers. Existing law provides that failure to wear a seatbelt is not evidence in a civil suit for an injured individual's contributory negligence. This bill would specify that the nonuse of a seatbelt by an injured individual can be used in a civil action for certain purposes, including proof that an accident victim failed to mitigate or otherwise caused his or her injury. This bill would regulate advertising statements made by attorneys about monetary awards they have obtained in other civil suits, by limiting the award amounts to those that are final and have actually been recovered and paid to clients, and would provide a criminal penalty for a knowing violation. Also, under existing law, a civil action, other than one involving child support, may be transferred to another county in which the action could have been lawfully filed, when the transfer would serve the convenience of the parties or is in the interest of justice. This bill would specify that the interest of justice requires a court to transfer a civil action to the county in which the facts underlying the suit occurred.

Statutes affected:
Introduced: 12-21-46