The Bumpy Road: Tort Reform in New Jersey

In 1995, the legislature passed the Affidavit of Merit Statute (AOM), N.J.S.A. 2A:53A-26 et seq. The first real challenge to an interpretation of this new AOM Statute did not occur until 1998, the same year in which the legislature passed the 1998 Automobile Insurance Cost Reduction Act (AICRA), N.J.S.A. 39:6A-1.1 to 35. The latter legislation significantly enhanced the requirements for personal injury plaintiffs to breach the limitation-on-lawsuit threshold, or verbal threshold, in order to recover for personal injury/non-economic damages. This statute had the desired effect of substantially limiting the number of lawsuits filed. Therefore, while not necessarily decreasing the costs of insurance (those costs held steady), it increased competition and created greater choice in the marketplace by developing an atmosphere that permitted both new insurers to enter the marketplace and old insurers who had left to return to the marketplace.

Together, these statutes rather effectively reduced the sheer volume of lawsuits heard in the civil division. But although tort reform has dramatically reduced the frequency of frivolous litigation, it has not helped the rapidity with which a case gets to trial. That is because many judges sitting in the civil division were re-appropriated to the criminal and chancery divisions to reduce their respective backlogs. So, due to the shifting of these judges, the reduction in the number of cases did not lead to a demonstrably quicker glide through the court system to trial, as the smaller number of judges remaining in the civil division were required to hear a greater number of cases per judge than before. The same frustrations that existed with respect to the delays in reaching trial continue to exist notwithstanding the efficacy of the tort reform measures enacted.