Speaker 1: Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome.
Speaker 1: It is time now for our community connection right here
Speaker 1: on Gay one, the one you trust. Senator Daniels is
Speaker 1: in with this. Hey, Julie, how you doing.
Speaker 2: Morning, Tom? How are you on this beautiful Monday.
Speaker 1: Well, I tell you what, it's a great day in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood. As they say, we've got counting down the
Speaker 1: days to election day. And I know that's part of
Speaker 1: what we're talking about today is something that most folks
Speaker 1: when they grab that ballot, these what's this about the judges? Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and I'm here as a citizen with my
Speaker 2: own personal views on this subject, all right, But I did,
Speaker 2: you know, study them for the past eight years, four
Speaker 2: years as Judiciary Chairman and the Senate, paying a lot
Speaker 2: of attention to our Supreme Court, whereas before being elected,
Speaker 2: I was much more focused like many people are on
Speaker 2: the United States Supreme Court. And I want to say,
Speaker 2: in terms of the election, you're voting on whether or
Speaker 2: not to retain these justices, and there's a whole slew
Speaker 2: of names on there, and I want to remind people
Speaker 2: to turn your ballot over. I'm hearing that some people
Speaker 2: are voting on the front page and not realizing there
Speaker 2: are other things on the back page in some places,
Speaker 2: So make sure you thoroughly peruse the ballot before you
Speaker 2: stick it in the machine. I'm here to talk about
Speaker 2: my opinion that we should vote to not retain the
Speaker 2: three Supreme Court justices. That would mean a no vote.
Speaker 2: That is time for them to retire. And I have
Speaker 2: very specific reasons for that, and it has to do
Speaker 2: with them methodically and working to undermine many of the
Speaker 2: reforms that have been passed in our state in the
Speaker 2: past fifteen or so years. And I think this is
Speaker 2: very telling about the attitude of people in the judiciary
Speaker 2: and those who put them there by telling the governor,
Speaker 2: these are the three names you may choose from, because
Speaker 2: we have a system that I think is not very
Speaker 2: reflective of the voting public. But these justices go, and
Speaker 2: none of them have ever been unretained. We've never voted
Speaker 2: no on any of them, and yet by and large,
Speaker 2: they do not reflect the political reality of our state
Speaker 2: since we changed over from being a one party state,
Speaker 2: which we were for one hundred plus years. I just
Speaker 2: want to read a quote that was in the Tulsa
Speaker 2: World not long ago defending these justices. This is former
Speaker 2: Justice Joseph Watt, who wants them return to the court,
Speaker 2: saying they have years of appellate experience. True, they are
Speaker 2: entitled to be retained.
Speaker 1: Entitled, Yes, it was entitled.
Speaker 2: Any if I said that to a voter, I'm entitled
Speaker 2: to be or re elected to the Senate, you can
Speaker 2: imagine what the reaction will be. They are not entitled
Speaker 2: to be retained. And I'd like to argue that there
Speaker 2: are reasons that they should be retired from the bench.
Speaker 2: Talked a little bit about that with election law last time.
Speaker 2: I'll just reiterate that that in the midst of COVID
Speaker 2: in the spring of twenty twenty, these justices along with others,
Speaker 2: made up a majority to undo our election laws at
Speaker 2: the last minute. They didn't want any notorization of ballots,
Speaker 2: and they didn't like that we were going to let
Speaker 2: people photocopy their ID, put it in their absentee ballot
Speaker 2: envelope and signed the affidavit this is me. This is
Speaker 2: my ID that I'm putting in this ballot. That way
Speaker 2: they wouldn't have to go get it notarized. They said, nope,
Speaker 2: that's not good enough, and the notorization. We don't want
Speaker 2: that either, so none of that can be done. We
Speaker 2: fixed it, The legislature fixed it right before we adjourned
Speaker 2: the end of May. That was a legal women voters case.
Speaker 2: Then the Democrat Party suit us in federal court trying
Speaker 2: to do the same thing as we approached the general election,
Speaker 2: and a federal district judge appointed by Barack Obama throughout
Speaker 2: all their arguments. A federal district judge appointed by Obama said,
Speaker 2: unlike our own Supreme Court, election law is the purview
Speaker 2: of the legislature. I'm not a le legislature of one.
Speaker 2: If you want to try to change election law, you
Speaker 2: go to your legislature. So that was one example of
Speaker 2: where I believe there was real judicial overreach. People have
Speaker 2: asked me, well, how do you judge whether or not
Speaker 2: you should retain a justice, and the methodology that has
Speaker 2: been used on this new website oklajudges dot com okla
Speaker 2: judges dot Com says that a judge needs to say
Speaker 2: what the law is, not what they want it to be.
Speaker 2: The election law very clearly said here's what we're going
Speaker 2: to do to accommodate people during COVID. They didn't like it,
Speaker 2: so they threw it out and made the law what
Speaker 2: they wanted to be. But they are not an elected
Speaker 2: branch of government. Yes, it's a third equal branch, but
Speaker 2: the founders were very clever. They didn't want to elect
Speaker 2: the judiciary, so they had them appointed by those who
Speaker 2: are elected. And that's really the methodology that I believe
Speaker 2: would be the best for our state. But anyway, you're
Speaker 2: not supposed to put your own individual preferences into your decisions.
Speaker 2: You're supposed to look at what the legislature did and
Speaker 2: decide what the legislature said, and not take their words
Speaker 2: and twist them into what you want. So that is
Speaker 2: where we are with some of these justices. And I
Speaker 2: just wanted to talk about an issue today, and that
Speaker 2: is workers compensation reform and lawsuit reform. These have been
Speaker 2: very active issues for the Republican legislature since they first
Speaker 2: took the majority back in about two thousand and four.
Speaker 2: So how do you compete with other states? We all
Speaker 2: talk and sometimes argue about big incentives for companies to
Speaker 2: come into our state, but you've got to get the
Speaker 2: back office functions right or you start out at a
Speaker 2: negative with people looking at your state, and one of
Speaker 2: these is through lawsuit reform and workers' comp reform. How
Speaker 2: friendly are you to business is in terms of making
Speaker 2: sure your regulations are reliable, don't change too much, and
Speaker 2: they can count on certain costs associated with doing business.
Speaker 2: If you don't have lawsuit reform, if it's up and
Speaker 2: down depending on the venue and the judge and the attorneys,
Speaker 2: then insurance goes up, particularly medical malpractice insurance. And you
Speaker 2: have people looking at the states saying, Ah, that's too
Speaker 2: risky to go to Oklahoma. I'm going to go to
Speaker 2: Florida where they have comprehensive lawsuit reform, or better yet,
Speaker 2: let's go to Texas where they accomplished this in two
Speaker 2: thousand and three. In two thousand and three, they passed
Speaker 2: comprehensive lawsuit reform that included capping non economic damages. Those
Speaker 2: are the pain and suffering damages, not the medical rehabilitation,
Speaker 2: loss of income damages, but the ones where a jury
Speaker 2: or a judge that says, we're mad that this happened,
Speaker 2: we're mad that this happened in the workplace, and we're
Speaker 2: going to punish the employer. So they capped non economic damages.
Speaker 2: They outlawed forum shopping, going and finding the judge who
Speaker 2: would be most likely to decide for your client, and
Speaker 2: they limited damages in medical malpractice cases. In response to
Speaker 2: Texas doing that, a sitting senator, Senator Stratton Taylor from Claremore,
Speaker 2: who had been pro tim of the stenate, wrote to
Speaker 2: his American Trial Lawyer Association associates in Texas and said,
Speaker 2: with the recent events that have occurred in Texas, you
Speaker 2: may be looking to file cases in Oklahoma. I want
Speaker 2: to take the opportunity to introduce you to our law firm,
Speaker 2: and the end of the letter says we would be
Speaker 2: pleased to assist you in any cases you may want
Speaker 2: to file in Oklahoma. The response from the legislature was
Speaker 2: overwhelmingly negative, and then the Wall Street Journal weighed in
Speaker 2: and they said that the letter is an invitation for
Speaker 2: the entire national tort bar to forum shop in Oklahoma,
Speaker 2: a state that just can't say no to jackpot justice.
Speaker 2: Keating tried for two terms to get a demo crat
Speaker 2: legislature to at least start reigning in the abuses in
Speaker 2: this area and was only successful with a few things
Speaker 2: on punitive damages. But as the Wall Street Journal said
Speaker 2: in two thousand and three, you're going to continue to
Speaker 2: see higher insurance costs, fewer doctors, and all the other
Speaker 2: troubles that come with an out of control to court system.
Speaker 2: So we finally passed it in two thousand and four,
Speaker 2: and five years later our Supreme Court threw it out
Speaker 2: the whole thing. Then we worked on non economic damages
Speaker 2: and we passed a cap on those in twenty eleven,
Speaker 2: a cap of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Eight
Speaker 2: years later, Supreme Court threw it out. We worked to
Speaker 2: change our workers' comp system. Instead of a broken arm
Speaker 2: at this workplace and a broken arm at that workplace
Speaker 2: being treated differently because you have different lawyers in different
Speaker 2: courts advocating for as much money as they can get,
Speaker 2: go to a commission system where you standardize how you're
Speaker 2: going to treat different injuries, and you have a commission
Speaker 2: to hear the complaints about those decisions. You can't appeal
Speaker 2: then to the court. We worked very hard to get
Speaker 2: this done, and it was a comprehensive rewrite of workers
Speaker 2: been done in many states. And the first thing our
Speaker 2: Supreme Court did, including these three justices, was to say
Speaker 2: you put an entire change of the law into one bill. Yes,
Speaker 2: it's all one law, comprehensive, comprehensive, but we believe that's
Speaker 2: lag rolling, and so we're going to throw it out.
Speaker 2: We had to go into special session. Taxpayers paid for
Speaker 2: the legislature to go into special session in twenty fourteen
Speaker 2: and pass thirty six separate bills to accomplish the reform.
Speaker 2: But again, these judges, including these three justices, said, oh,
Speaker 2: but anybody in the old system, the re litigious system,
Speaker 2: they can't enter the new system, which perpetuated two different
Speaker 2: ways of doing workers' comp right up until today, keeping
Speaker 2: the court going for a while and then the commission
Speaker 2: system over here. And we have injured workers languishing years
Speaker 2: later in this other system when they could easily have
Speaker 2: been transferred, injuries treated, damages, be returned to work. And
Speaker 2: so it's really undermined our ability to get people healthy
Speaker 2: and back to work. So here's the deal. It's up
Speaker 2: to us. If we don't vote, we are voting to
Speaker 2: keep these same kinds of decisions coming down from the
Speaker 2: bench with these three justices in those majority opinions. Just
Speaker 2: one other quick example, most recent, we have a multiple
Speaker 2: injury trust fund that says, if you have worked for
Speaker 2: multiple employers and you've had several injuries, we don't know
Speaker 2: exactly how to assign responsibility, so you may go to
Speaker 2: this fund where everyone contributes and taxpayers contribute to making
Speaker 2: sure we have money to address the needs of people
Speaker 2: who have had multiple injuries with multiple employers. Trial lawyer
Speaker 2: challenged this year and said, you say it has to
Speaker 2: be a subsequent employer before they can tap into this
Speaker 2: trust fund, But we think you really mean subsequent injury.
Speaker 2: That you can be with the same employer, work for
Speaker 2: the same employer your entire career, and they're paying for
Speaker 2: workplace injuries, but then you have a subsequent injury after
Speaker 2: that employer. But you know what, we think the existing
Speaker 2: employer can be the subsequent employer. Subsequent to me means after,
Speaker 2: And the Supreme Court managed to say that subsequent employer
Speaker 2: actually does mean subsequent injury. So you can work for
Speaker 2: the same employer twenty thirty years and you can still
Speaker 2: go to this multiple injury trust fund. Completely undoes what
Speaker 2: the reform said. And they said very cleverly, somewhere in
Speaker 2: the statutes, you use subsequent injury. So when you use
Speaker 2: subsequent injury. You must always mean subsequent injury, and the
Speaker 2: fact that you put employer after the word doesn't make
Speaker 2: any sense. You actually meant to say subsequent injury. So
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter if you work for the same employer
Speaker 2: your entire career. You could also tap into that trust fund,
Speaker 2: which was only intended for employees who worked for multiple employers.
Speaker 2: I know it's very in the weeds, but this affects
Speaker 2: your insurance rates, This effects the cost of during doing business.
Speaker 2: It all comes down to the consumer in the end.
Speaker 2: And these are reforms we put in place to make
Speaker 2: Oklahoma more attractive. And so as we erode these reforms,
Speaker 2: we go back to where we were finishing up in
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen when they threw out our cap on non
Speaker 2: economic damages. We went from being in the top ten
Speaker 2: with the American Tort Reform Association. We had been working
Speaker 2: our way up to the judicial health with one decision,
Speaker 2: and we are still there because we continue to retain
Speaker 2: justices that are absolutely opposed to the reforms the elected
Speaker 2: representatives and senators and governors are putting in place in
Speaker 2: our states. So I would urge everybody to carefully consider
Speaker 2: voting no on retention of these three justices. And remember
Speaker 2: to look at your whole ballot because you've got various
Speaker 2: things to vote on, so you need to look at
Speaker 2: both sides.
Speaker 1: Okay, look at everything. Senator, thank you very much for
Speaker 1: being with us, very informative,