Jury-waiver stalls, then gains traction; vote on Arkansas House floor expected today

The quickening pace of the special session Wednesday saw a bill regarding contractual jury-trial waivers get blocked in a Senate committee before lunch, only to receive passage from the full Senate in the afternoon.

To start the day, state Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson, R-Little Rock, presented to the Senate Judiciary Committee an amended version of his Senate Bill 5, which proposes to enforce jury-trial waivers written into financial and loan contracts.

The day before, the House Judiciary Committee voted down a companion bill in the lower chamber that applied to a broader range of contracts, prompting Hutchinson to narrow his legislation to apply only to financial contracts.

Still, Republicans and one Democrat on the Senate committee said the bill made them uneasy.

"Why don't we just do away with jury trials all together, that seems to be where we're headed?" said state Sen. Will Bond, D-Little Rock, referring to a Republican-proposed constitutional amendment that would limit certain kinds of damages that juries may award in lawsuits.

The vice chairman of the committee, Sen. Linda Collins-Smith, R-Pocahontas, said she'd prefer to wait until the 2019 regular legislative session to consider the jury-waiver legislation, to give the public more time to comment on it.

But after failing to get the four required votes to get his bill out of committee in the morning, Hutchinson was able to round up enough votes in the afternoon through a procedure that allows bills to be signed out of committee and taken to the Senate floor.

With signatures from four committee members, including state Sen. Terry Rice, R-Waldron, who had voted against the bill that morning, Hutchinson got his bill to the full Senate, which passed it 23-5.

Within an hour, the bill was in the House Judiciary Committee, where a more expansive version had failed the day before.

The House committee passed the Senate bill out on a voice vote with no opposition, sending it along to the full House, where it will be considered today.

Rep. Bob Ballinger, R-Hindsville, the House sponsor of the bill, said the issue was brought up in the special session to bring clarity after a December decision by the Arkansas Supreme Court threatened to affect existing loan and financial contracts. He said in the future, the Legislature should look at enforcing such waivers in all contracts.

"That's probably what we need to get back to, however, [the financial contracts were] the immediate concern," Ballinger said. "I'm glad we're getting something done."

One of the opponents on the House committee, state Rep. Clarke Tucker, D-Little Rock, said he was "a lot more comfortable" with the amended bill. He said he would probably still vote against the bill on the floor today, but he declined to voice his opposition in committee.

"The bill sponsors worked with me on the language and I just wanted to return that courtesy," Tucker said.

Legislative leaders have expressed a desire to wrap up the special session today.




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A Section on 03/15/2018

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