Rep. Tryon Lewis

Rep. Tryon Lewis

HB 3098 by Rep. Tryon Lewis (R-Odessa), chair of the House Judiciary & Civil Jurisprudence Committee, makes evidence of a defendant’s net worth privileged from discovery and inadmissible to support a claim for or the amount of punitive damages. The bill further prohibits the trier of fact from considering a defendant’s net worth for those purposes. The bill would reverse a 1988 decision by the Texas Supreme Court in Lunsford v. Morris, 746 S.W.2d 471 (Tex. 1988, orig. proceeding). TCJL supports HB 3098 on the basis that “net worth” remains a vague and ill-defined standard that is just as likely to mislead the trier of fact as inform it. As former Justice Raul Gonzalez stated in his dissent in Lunsford v. Morris, “‘I know it when I see it’ is not much of a standard.” 746 S.W.2d at 476.

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