House avoids increase on liability cap

State's payout limit reduced to $2 million in substitute measure

By Josh Loftin
Deseret Morning News
Published: Thursday, Feb. 23, 2006 9:33 a.m. MST
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Government cost may be more important than government fault.

A bill that would have raised the caps on government liabilities to $10 million, SB113, was substituted Wednesday morning by the House Political Subdivisions Committee with a bill that caps total liability at $2 million and does not raise the current $553,500 individual cap. The substituted bill eventually passed the committee with only one dissenting vote.

Rep. Gregg Buxton, R-Roy, who sponsored the substitute bill, said the $10 million cap was extravagantly high and would end up raising the premiums for the liability insurance of local governments. Those increased premiums would eventually hit residents, either with a tax increase or heightened costs for services.

The substitute bill does allow the state's Board of Adjusters to pay more to victims and their families. But that money would come out of the state's general fund, even for an accident that happened at the local level.

"I feel the pain of people in tragedy and loss," Buxton said. "But we as elected officials have a responsibility to look at the bigger picture, and not just the personal picture, and consider the impact on all of the people of the state. . . . We cannot make everyone a millionaire because they are in an accident with the state."

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Raising the liability would have meant that in a "catastrophic" accident, such as the Utah State University van crash that killed eight students and their instructor, or a Highland High School van accident that killed three students, the victims or their families would get at least enough compensation from the state to cover medical costs, sponsoring Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, said. At a $2 million cap, however, the maximum award in an accident like the USU van crash would have amounted to less than $200,000 per person, which is "woefully insufficient" when considering that medical costs for the surviving victims have already exceeded $500,000.

The bill does not award victims retroactively, but Stephenson said the accidents that have occurred should demonstrate the need for increased liabilities.

"This does not make people millionaires," Stephenson said. "This simply covers their economic losses."

Rep. Ronda Menlove, R-Garland, who represents an area where four of the families of victims in the USU van crash live, said that governments should be more concerned about the impact on people than the costs they might incur. She was the only representative to vote against the bill.

"When these events touch our lives personally, it gives us a new perspective," Menlove said. "I am extremely concerned that we need to have a system that takes care of our own."

E-mail: jloftin@desnews.com

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