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Monday, April 16, 2007
Colonial Pipeline bill tanks in House Judiciary Committee, 7 to 4
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The House Judiciary Committee on Monday abruptly killed a bill to ease restrictions that Colonial Pipeline Co. must meet to build a third petroleum pipeline from Baton Rouge, La., to Powder Springs.
The defeat came on a 7 to 4 vote led by a bipartisan coalition of Cobb County legislators. In the end, state Rep. Rich Golick of Smyrna, the highest-ranking Republican in the vote against S.B. 173, said he didn’t trust the company — which came to local legislators late in the process.
We’ll link to the detailed story later.
The bill was dumped only after chairman Wendell Willard introduced what he thought was series of compromises acceptable to opponents. Golick said he joined Democrats in the effort to block the bill at the committee level, because he didn’t trust what might come out in the House-Senate negotiations on the bill.
Willard was clearly caught off guard. Immediately afterwards, he turned to state Rep. Robbin Shipp (D-Atlanta) and asked, “What was wrong with it? What was wrong with it?”
Certainty and uncertainty in the coming gun bill debate
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The certainty is that H.B. 89, the new vehicle for the guns-in-parking-lots bill, will be debated in the Senate in the aftermath of the worst campus massacre in U.S. history at Virginia Tech.
You’ll recall that on Day 30, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle shelved the first parking-lots-in-gun bill in part because debate coincided with an employee-on-employee slaying in Atlanta.
The uncertainty is the impact of the bill. We’ve got reports that it’s been thoroughly gutted. NRA types say they’ve got what they want.
Here’s the new version of the bill. Somebody get a lawyer and tell us what it means.
Your morning bulletin: Senate Judiciary smacks down the express-lane death penalty bill; NRA decides not to fight lawyers, too.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Senate Judiciary Committee just delivered a unanimous vote against the House bill that would allow the application of the death penalty with a less than unanimous vote from the jury. We’ll link you to the detailed story once it’s posted.
And the Senate Rules Committee voted out a guns-in-parking-lot bill absent the proposal to end “vicarious litigation” and sever the liability link between employee and employer.
The NRA decided they didn’t want to fight the Georgia Chamber of Commerce and the state’s lawyers. The chamber is claiming the bill left the rules committee gutted, but we’ll wait for the details.
We’ll post the new version of H.B. 89 as soon as we get hold of it.
FYI, Boortz seems to be on the side of the NRA
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As we write this, WSB radio talk show host Neal Boortz has taken up the guns-in-parking-lots issue, and appears to be siding with the National Rifle Association.
Boortz says trial lawyers are exaggerating the threat to vicarious liability issue (for details, see the post below.) And says he keeps guns in some of the cars he drives to work each day.
Want to upend the legal system? State Bar says the gun bill will do it
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The most important press release of the weekend came from the State Bar of Georgia, which announced that — after a Friday emergency meeting of officers — it would oppose the latest permutation of the guns-in-parking-lots bill.
The Georgia Trial Lawyers Association had jumped in a day earlier, but that group has all sorts of baggage from tort-reform fights and its membership’s tendency to donate to Democratic causes.
The State Bar, by contrast, is old money. Corporate, staid, and, more important, ubiquitous. Wherever there’s a lawyer, there’s the Bar.
The issue is the National Rifle Association’s proposal to end vicarious litigation, a concept whereby the employer is held responsible for the employee’s actions.
The NRA proposed to dump the legal doctrine, which is only a few centuries old and looks years younger, as an enticement to Georgia’s business community. Chamber of commerce types have opposed the effort to give employees the right to keep firearms in cars on the company lot as an infringement of private property rights.
Details are to tucked into H.B. 89.
But the business community says its not impressed. And State Bar president Jay Cook on Saturday put the issue in easy-to-understand, apocalyptic terms:
“Surely our legislators don’t realize the devastating consequences this will have on our justice system and the people of Georgia.
“Vicarious liability is a principal of law that’s been with us for more than a thousand years. Is it wise to wipe out a millennium of legal tradition with three paragraphs in an unrelated bill?
“I hope our representatives will give this matter the careful consideration it deserves.”
As a matter of fact, the Senate Rules Committee is to take up the bill within minutes.
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