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A watchful eye for consumers: too often consumers' rights fall through the cracks, and corporations can shirk responsibility for wrongdoing. One Texas organization is working to hold them accountable.

Article Excerpt
Texas Watch, a nonprofit advocacy organization, keeps its eye on insurance companies, corporations, and the courts, working with legislators to ensure that Texas laws reflect the needs of families and consumers rather than wealthy special interests. The group aims to strengthen protections for children and seniors, lower insurance rates, provide safer workplaces and neighborhoods, help homeowners and small businesses stand up to powerful corporations, and educate consumers. Texas Watch's executive director, N. ALEX WINSLOW, talked with TRIAL Associate Editor ALLISON TORRES BURTKA about the group's work.

TRIAL: Many of the issues that Texas Watch focuses on overlap with issues plaintiff attorneys are concerned about, including insurance company practices, patient and workplace safety, and access to courts. What would you say is the biggest abuse of corporate power that your organization is trying to fight?

Winslow: There are many areas of concern. We work a great deal on insurance rates and claims-handling. And, more and more, we're finding ourselves embroiled in fights with regard to workplace safety and ensuring that owners of chemical plants, oil refineries, and manufacturing facilities are held accountable if they don't offer a safe work site.

There's a fundamental issue: whether those who harm individuals are going to be held accountable. What we've seen in our state, and what we're starting to see more across the nation and at the federal level, too, is a desire by special interests to whittle away people's legal rights and create a corporate immunity shield for those who would do harm to individuals and families.

TRIAL: What insurance reforms are you advocating?

Winslow: We believe we need much stronger oversight of the industry to make sure that homeowners, drivers, small-business owners, and patients are treated fairly and that the rates they're paying are reasonable.

Texas has seen high insurance rates, particularly in the homeowners insurance market, for a number of years. On the flip side, we've seen significant reductions in insurance industry losses. So, while premiums have remained very high, the amount of money that insurance companies are paying out in claims has gone down dramatically.

That's happened for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that the policies in the marketplace right now simply don't cover very much. Consumers are paying at least as much as they were before, but they're getting much less for it.

In the Texas legislature, we're pushing for stricter oversight that would require insurance companies to get their rates approved before they're allowed to impose them on policyholders. As backward as it sounds, insurance companies in Texas are...

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