Lee Parsley, the General Counsel and President of Texans for Lawsuit Reform, has become a prominent figure in the conversation about the legal landscape and legal reform in Texas. With over 35 years of experience in law, his journey through Texas and into the legal business gives him a unique perspective on the intersection of law and business in the Lone Star State. 

Parsley grew up on a cotton farm in Lubbock, Texas, where he pursued his education at Texas Tech University before moving to Austin in 1985. 

“I discovered that Austin had hills and trees and water, which made it different than Lubbock,” Parsley says. 

His initial work in the Texas government paved the way for his understanding of the legal procedures in the state. This early work laid a foundation for his later work with TRL, particularly in drafting legislation aimed at reforming Texas’s lawsuit culture. 

“I was an attorney for the Texas Supreme Court for about four years in my career,” he says.” I learned in that job how to write rules and statutes.”. 

What Parsley quickly learned was that Texas held the title of being “the lawsuit capital of the world” during the 1980s. 

“I literally mean the world,” he says. “You would suffer an injury in Mexico and you’d file a lawsuit in Texas or an injury in Venezuela, and file in Texas.” 

Parsley believes that, at that time, the legal landscape was heavily skewed, drawing both legitimate cases and those that exploited the legal system. “We had some pretty generous laws, at least on the plaintiff's side.” 

This dynamic of significant litigation led to the founding of Texans for Lawsuit Reform. “It was the kind of environment that led to the creation of TLR to try to restabilize it,” Parsley says. The focus of TLR since then has been to ensure that Texans can pursue legitimate claims while weeding out frivolous lawsuits.

“For you and I, or anybody, could be hit by a truck tomorrow and be seriously injured,” he says. “At the same time, we need to weed out the instances where people are suing when they only claim their injury was caused by the accident or when people are suing they don’t have an injury at all.” 

An important part of the discussion revolved around the definition of “injury” within the legal framework. “In legal terms, injury doesn’t necessarily mean, you know, I broke my arm,” Parsley says, noting that it can include financial harm or harm done to one’s reputation. 

This expansive definition, according to Parsley, underpins many of the abuse cases encountered in civil law, where substantial awards — often in the millions — are sought for seemingly minor grievances. Parsley says the rise in personal injury lawsuits, especially concerning vehicle accidents, point to a troubling trend of overdiagnosis and inflated claims in what he terms as “nuclear verdicts.” 

“A nuclear verdict is a reference to a verdict in an injury case that is $10 million or more. There was a case in Texas where someone got a $101 million verdict for a fender bender.” 

When insurance companies pay these large verdicts, Parsley thinks this exacerbates the issue by ensuring future claims. “When they start paying everything… it just incentivizes more cases to come in the door.” This “circling the drain effect,” as he describes, leads to more settlements impacting insurance premiums and Texans wallets. 

The effects of this litigation ripple through the economy, says Parsley, directly impacting insurance premiums for everyday Texans. “I can guarantee you that your insurance premiums have been going up every year.” 

Parsley believes this constricts people’s financial freedom and the economy more generally. “You’ve got a little less money to spend on other things.” 

In 2003, TLR was successful in getting reform to Texas’s medical liability laws, resulting in “malpractice insurance premiums paid by doctors… split in half.” 

Moving forward, TLR plans to advocate for continued reforms focused on further stabilizing the legal environment. Their goals include curbing unnecessary lawsuits and establishing limits on excessive jury awards, particularly in personal injury cases. 

“We need to give our jurors better information about pain and suffering damages.” 

Additionally, Parsley and TLR see a need for reform to public nuisance claims. They aim to establish a doctrine of “if you are engaged in a lawful activity… a court cannot declare that to be a public nuisance that can give rise to damages in a lawsuit.” 

Parsley believes this legislative change would prevent courts from regulating lawful corporate activities through litigation, ensuring that such matters are handled within the legislative framework instead.

Overall, Parsley says that he hopes to help ensure that “Texas continues to be the best place in the nation to live and work.”