Ted Frank - Advocacy of Tort Reform

Advocacy of Tort Reform

"The whole point of a class action is to generate efficiencies that wouldn't be possible in individual actions -- so why are the attorneys taking a one-third contingent fee instead of a much smaller percentage?"

—Frank, questioning the class action system. May 2005.

In 2003, Frank began contributing regularly to Overlawyered, a legal weblog edited by Walter Olson that advocates tort reform; he continued there through 2010.

Frank joined the American Enterprise Institute in 2005 when AEI offered him a fellowship to research the effects of the Class Action Fairness Act. As the director of the AEI Legal Center for the Public Interest he spoke and wrote about civil justice issues and liability. Frank also sits on the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society's Litigation Practice Group.

Frank is a leading proponent for tort reform in the United States. According to Frank, he became disillusioned at class action tactics, and the willingness of judges to approve settlements he felt were poor for consumers. He has strongly criticized obesity lawsuits, calling them "rent-seeking vehicles that are neither good law nor good public policy."

In April 2008, several members of Congress brought up the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act under Title VII, a revision of law "to state that prior acts outside the 180 day statute of limitations could be included", affecting employment financial issues. Frank was against the revision. He said, "To the extent every employee is a potential lawsuit, that is a cost of hiring an employee. As those costs go up, employers will hire fewer employees, and charge "insurance" to the employees they do hire by reducing their wages to account for the possibility of a future lawsuit. If the misnamed "Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act" passes, the vast majority of workers will be worse off, as money that would have gone to pay employees will instead go to pay attorneys." The law was eventually passed in January 2009.

In February 2011, Frank was part of a three-member panel at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee which consisted of himself, James Blumstein, who is a law professor at the university, and Charlie Ross, a former State Senator in Mississippi, presenting their perspectives on how the business and people of the state would benefit from tort reform. Frank and the other panelists argued that "Tennessee’s current civil justice system is both inconsistent and unsustainable" and it was argued that, based on reforms in other states, a reform in this area could result in 30,000 jobs a year or 577 jobs each week in Tennessee and significantly improve the health system.