Much of our site is devoted to explaining in great detail how Texas injury law works. Today, however, we wanted to do something a little different by focusing less on the nuts and bolts of how particular types of cases work and instead focus on why our state's injury laws work the way they do.
In this article, we'll explain a little about where Texas injury law comes from, why it works the way it does, and what it hopes to accomplish.
Where does Texas injury law come from?
We Texans are pretty proud of being from the Lone Star State, and we revere our historical figures with equal gusto. Which is why it is incredibly tempting for me to answer the question of, "Where do Texas laws come from?" with a story about Davy Crockett descending from Mt. Bonnell with a stone tablet under each arm. If only.
The real story is that Texas, like most states and indeed America itself, voluntarily adopted its injury laws from the English common law system, and then added to them over the years with various new codified laws created by elected lawmakers. In fact, early Texans chose to adopt English common law on two separate occasions. The first time was when they formed the Republic of Texas. Then they turned right around and did the same thing when Texas became a state.
The really interesting part is that the original 13 states in America all did so first, but, as you'll recall, those states were once the 13 colonies, meaning that, when they adopted a common law system as they became states, they just basically kept what was already in place. After all, as British colonies, they were already ruled by English law. So, when America became America, they rejected all the monarchist nonsense but retained the parts that they liked, such as the justice system, yet they made a better version of it by changing the way that judges were added to the high court, giving Congress the power to further expand the court system as a whole, and by incorporating the judicial branch into the balance of power scheme that is so vital to the way our country functions.
But when Texas chose to adopt common law, Texas was not formerly a British colony. Texas didn't come into existence as a nation until 1836, and it became a state and joined the US in 1845, long after the British held sway in North America. The takeaway from this is that Texas' founders had their pick of the litter when choosing from the world's various legal systems, yet they chose the common law system willfully and with full appreciation of what it entailed.
Why does this matter? Because in modern times it has become popular for armchair pundits to pronounce Texas injury law as some sort of new-fangled nonsense cooked up by injury lawyers and wacky liberal judges. They try to make it sound like Texas was never supposed to function the way it does with injured people suing those who hurt them, which is entirely incorrect. The Founders of Texas adopted the English common law system knowing full well that it included injury laws. Further, the Texas Constitution includes a bill of rights that guarantees the right to trial by jury, and it even goes so far as to create (in article XVI, section 26) a right for certain family members to sue for punitive damages whenever a loved one is killed due to gross negligence.
Further, Texas law makers have passed numerous laws to expand the rights of injured persons, even going so far as to create new rights where they believed that common law didn't provide enough of an opportunity for injured people to sue. Most of the changes I just mentioned came about long before the idea of wacky liberals was even a thing for Texans to get hot under the collar about. Heck, most of those laws came into existence before Texas schools were desegregated, so you'll have to forgive me if I seem a bit dismissive of the notion that the current state of injury laws in Texas is somehow an aberration of the way Texas is "supposed to work." If anything, in recent history, the pendulum has swung the other way with Texas lawmakers adding limits to the amount that victims can recover in many different types of cases.
Why does Texas have personal injury laws in the first place?
If you think of many of the seminal events in human history -- the Revolutionary War, signing of the Magna Carta, Moses leading the Hebrews out of Egypt, etc. -- you'll notice that they often have one thing in common: some people did bad things to other people which necessitated action. Laws, like revolution or divine intervention, come into existence because human beings are capable of great selfishness and are often willing to inflict harm on others, leading some intrepid soul to say, "Enough is enough. Something must be done." As history has shown us, banding together under a system of rules and accountability is the only real way to combat the inherent depravity of man.
We all understand that to be the case as it relates to criminal misconduct, and no one needs it explained to them that criminal laws exist to provide for a system of punishment that protects society at large by discouraging most would-be criminals from committing crime. It would be bad news to have a society that doesn't have criminal laws. But what many people fail to consider is that, in one regard, injuries may actually have the potential to be worse for society than most criminal acts. You see, when something is stolen from my neighbor, sure, it affects me psychologically (As an empathetic person, I feel for him, and, considering my own interests, it vexes me to think that something similar could be stolen from me), but it really is his problem, fundamentally. Yet when my neighbor is injured, the same feelings of empathy and self-concern are present, but also present is a realistic financial burden that me, you, and everyone else will have to cover if my neighbor has no legal recourse against the wrongdoer who hurt him.
Think about that for a second. When someone is robbed, the victim is usually the only one affected and his losses are his own. Yet when someone is injured badly, major expenses are incurred in the form of medical treatment, and we all know that medical care is itself a resource that is subsidized by all of society when left unpaid. As such, there are really only two ways of dealing with the problem of personal injuries: we can either allow society to pay for the victim's medical bills and other losses through a form of welfare or we can have a system of laws that empowers him to sue the wrongdoer. Most civilizations throughout human history have chosen the latter.
Those reasons are precisely why personal injury laws exist in Texas, to say nothing the underlying principals of fairness and accountability that are also baked in. Personal injury laws are simply laws built on the theory that all people owe to every other person a duty to avoid harming them through carelessness. And if some wrongdoer should fail to fulfill this duty, injury law says that the wrongdoer should compensate the victim for the losses incurred. Such laws exist to allow all of us collectively to avoid paying for someone else's carelessness, and, instead, lay the cost at the feet of the wrongdoer himself. That's pretty much all there is to it.
Jury Trials
One of the most important rights that we enjoy as Texans is the right to a jury trial. In Texas, the right is found in Article 5, Section 10 of the Texas Constitution. In The US version, the 7th Amendment in the Bill of Rights allows for a trial by jury for cases "at common law" for more than a nominal amount.
The basic right for the injured, then, is the right to have a jury of their peers decide their case. This is important because, throughout most of human history, dictators, kings, warlords, and the ultra wealthy were able to run roughshod over normal citizens. For most of European history, in particular, leaders claimed that their right to govern was granted by God himself. As you can imagine, when a lowly citizen felt that they should be able to see justice served, that was only possible when the ruling class allowed them to do so. When America was founded, it set an important precedent by being the first country in human history to recognize that the consent of its citizens as the only source of its authority to govern. For instance, George Washington never claimed an inherent right to rule, not did he claim to be appointed by the Almighty. Rather, he was granted that right by the people, just as every elected official in America ever since has been so placed into power.
Being that we are a nation founded on the idea that the people are in charge, it doesn't take much guesswork to understand why we have the right to have our disputes settled by a jury of our peers (i.e. the people). Doing it this way takes the process away from the powerful and puts the fate of justice in the hands of regular folks.
Another way to look at it is to say that countries who don't have jury trials (and instead just have a judge preside over the entire matter, or, even worse, countries where their citizens have no access to any kind of court at all) are fundamentally un-American and un-Texan for the simple fact that such judges are basically miniature kings. As you can imagine, that doesn't sit well with most Americans. Can putting so much power in the hands of regular people cause problems? Sure, but that's certainly the lesser of two evils, as our Founding Fathers have made abundantly clear.
"But, Cory," you say. "Why are there so many lawsuits? Aren't there too many?" I could write an entire book on the subject, but I'll keep it simple instead, and I'll even frame it in terms that most Texans can appreciate in a uniquely Texan way. What if someone from up North were to come to your house and say, "Why do you have so many guns? Don't you have too many?" Your answer would probably be something along the lines of, "Because we're free in this country and state to own as many firearms as we please, and I don't need your darn approval to do so."
Guess what. The same logic applies to questions of civil suits. Asking why there are so many suits is a bit like asking why people feel the need to exercise free speech, religious freedom, the right to keep and bear arms, or any other inherent rights that we enjoy in this country. One of my favorite books is a compendium of Supreme Court firearms cases, and in it the author poignantly states, "...constitutional rights are not subject to a cost-benefit analysis." He's right. They exist to be enjoyed by all who live in this country, and, indeed, all who live in the State of Texas. The reason we have so many lawsuits is because we live in a country where people have the freedom to exercise their rights. It's not always pretty, and sometimes it's abused (just like every other right that exists), but responsibility and accountability are fundamentally Texan values, and personal injury suits are just about the most basic way that those values are exercised.