The Tort Claims Act was enacted in 1986 to protect taxpayers from potentially large awards resulting from inevitable litigation against governmental entities. A Senate Judiciary subcommittee met yesterday to discuss S. 7, which increases the multiple damages caps found in the Tort Claims Act. S. 7 proposes three drastic changes: first, it raises the cap for individual claims from $300,000 to $ 1 million; second, it increases the cap on each occurrence from $600,000 to $2 million; and finally, it indexes these new caps to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) which would cause an annual increase in the caps. SCAC testified on this legislation and expressed concern about the potential fiscal impact on county government. This legislation proposes to increase the caps by more than 300 percent and will dramatically increase your insurance rates. County budgets that are already pushed to limits will be further strained by such a change. SCAC opposes this unnecessarily large increase as well as any attempt to index the caps to inflation. Please contact your Senate delegation today and ask that they oppose this bill as passed by the subcommittee both when it goes to full Senate Judiciary on Tuesday and if it reaches the full Senate.

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Please contact Josh Rhodes with SCAC at (803) 609-5961 with any questions or comments, and to relay the results of these contacts.