Center for Justice & Democracy

10/12/2026

Four years ago Florida decided to respond to the state’s homeowners insurance crisis by making it harder to sue insurance companies. Since then, the “tort reform” crowd has been insisting that Florida’s approach has “worked” and has been aggressively pushing it elsewhere. Our new Backgrounder draws on recent reporting showing what has now become obvious: that “tort reform” has not “worked” and that voters and policyholders are well aware of it. https://centerjd.org/content/backgrounder-tort-reform-blunder-what-voters-know-and-florida-learned

09/30/2026

Check out our new study, "THE INHUMANITY CLAUSE: The Rise of Forced Arbitration in Death and Injury Cases." This study examines the disturbing spread of forced arbitration “to its darkest extremes—cases involving wrongful death, catastrophic injury or criminal abuse.” There are car crash cases including both AVs and (many) ride-shares, cases involving tech, kids, teens and many more. These cases provide a new way to frame discussions around forced arbitration. The title comes directly from Disney’s quote when deciding to reverse course and not compel arbitration after someone died at Disney World, saying “At Disney, we strive to put humanity above all other considerations.” Unfortunately, other companies are not following Disney’s lead. https://centerjd.org/content/study-inhumanity-clause-rise-forced-arbitration-death-and-injury-cases

09/28/2026

We are so sorry for Florida policyholders who lost their legal rights for nothing - as we and others completely predicted.

They’re reporting surging premiums, a staggering rate of being dropped by their insurers, and deep dissatisfaction with the coverage they’re getting in our exclusive South Florida Sun Sentinel/Orlando Sentinel poll.

09/07/2026

08/31/2026

Powerful piece. We were happy to contribute.

08/26/2026

https://www.gulftoday.ae/opinion/2026/08/10/florida-chooses-insurers-and-their-profits-over-homeowners "Florida has repeatedly applied tort-reform medicine to its insurance problem since the 1980s. None of it has helped, according to Joanne Doroshow, executive director of the Center for Justice & Democracy at New York Law School and co-founder of the advocacy group Americans for Insurance Reform. She and a former Texas insurance commissioner, Robert Hunter, produced a series of national studies going back to 1999 and discovered time and again that tort reform never helps customers.

'The insurance industry comes to a state and says rates are going up and the only way to bring them down is to pass tort reform,' Doroshow told me. 'In every single case, rates continue to go up, because the reasons rates go up have nothing to do with these kinds of tort limits.'”

US states are supposedly the laboratories of democracy, cooking up and testing local solutions to national problems. But some of those labs are more like Walter...

07/23/2026

Um, this looks kinda hilarious.

Not all underdogs are dogs. Coyote vs. ACME only in theaters August...

07/10/2026

There is no limit to the depravity of this company.

Uber Technologies Inc. has moved to thwart lawsuits funded by outside investors by requiring customers and drivers who sue the company to disclose details of any such arrangements.

06/25/2026

In 1974, Monsanto began selling Roundup, a weedkiller whose main active ingredient is glyphosate, an extremely toxic herbicide. The company knew as far back as the 1980s that Roundup and glyphosate were likely carcinogenic to humans. Not only did Monsanto tell no one, it actively tried to conceal the link. By the time Roundup was purchased in 2018 by German pharmaceutical and biotech giant Bayer, thousands of sick and dying Roundup customers had sued. Bayer asked the U.S. Supreme Court to effectively end all future state court litigation entirely. Today, they got their wish.

The court’s decision is likely to determine the future of thousands of lawsuits against Bayer, which manufactures the weedkiller, over similar claims.