* Zach Rudat, Director of the Michigan Alliance for Legal Reform

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Zach ru Datt is the director of the Michigan Alliance
for Legal Reform. Now we've been speaking with him for
a couple of years on the program, and now he
is in that capacity. He joins the radio stage to
take a bow and tell us what it's all about. Alfie,
welcome back to the airwaves.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Yeah, good morning, Michael Patrick. Glad to be back with you.
I've missed you.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Who represents that alliance and thank you for saying that.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yeah, So I just started this new role a couple
months ago. We've been pieced together this Michigan Alliance for
Legal re Formed the last couple of months, and we
formerly launched yesterday. So we're a coalition of thirty plus
different organizations associations across Michigan looking to reign and loss
abuse across the state of Michigan and bring some fairness
and balance back to the legal system, make sure works

(00:45):
for everybody. So very excited about the work we've been
doing and excited to be talking about it with you
this morning.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
What's an example of lawsuit abuse?

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Yeah, so I'll give you. I'll give you two different examples.
So two of the biggest priorities that we have out
of the gate right now legislatively is restoring Michigan's open
and Obvious premise ability protection and implementing some transparency on
third pre litigation funding. So open and obvious premise ability protection,
this is a protection that we used to have in
Michigan for property owners. Like let's say you had a

(01:15):
patch of ice or a pothole in your parking lot.
If you had some kind of hazard that was open
and obvious to the average person, that property owner would
be protected from any kind of lawsuit on that type
of hazard. Our court overruled that protection two years ago,
and now we're one of nine states across the country
that doesn't have something like that in the state of Michigan.
So we're looking to restore or at least pressure restore

(01:35):
that protection in the State of Michigan, and then on
third pre litigation funding. This is a practice where if
you're a financer, you approach a plane, if if you
approach a law firm and say, hey, i'll file finance
your lawsuit exchange for a cut up the settlement and
on face value might not sound super problematic, but it
creates problems where it's just adding fuel to fire for
lawsuits against the job employer or employers large and small.

(01:57):
There's absolutely nothing on the books here in Michigan regulate
this practice, so sometimes the plans themselves might not even
know that their case is being financed or influenced by
some other funder. And because there's such a lack of
disclosure here, I mean, it creates quite a hot bed first,
a pretty significant national security risk in Michigan. So if
you're a financer from from Russia, from China and you're
on the receiving of the TIFFs right now and you

(02:18):
want to retaliate in a way without being detected, this
creates a mechanism for them to come to Michigan finance
lawsuits against you know, our big industries like manufacturing and agriculture,
and undermine us economically without even being detected. So we're
not looking to ban the practice all together. We're just
looking to put some comments and scargos on it to
make sure that consumers are protected and our economy at
largest protected order larning costs for everybody.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
You got the likes of Jim Holcom, the president of
the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, Brian Kelly from the Small
Business Association of Michigan and the voice there you heard
of zach ru Dat, now director of the Michigan Alliance
for Legal Reform. Michael Patrick shields, I reserve the right
to call you from testimony. When it comes to healthcare costs,

(03:03):
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is charged by hospitals and doctors, and the cost of

(03:26):
prescription drugs, healthcare administration, and technology. These costs flow downstream
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(03:47):
and affordability matters, and that starts with shedding light on
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