According to one laid off federal employee,

[Cirsium]

42. "Tort reform"

Republicans have long pushed "tort reform" to protect corporations from consumers seeking damages. Their propaganda campaign has been so successful that I wouod bet there are a bunch of Democrats who think it is a good idea.

Republicans love the justice system when it goes after workers, those in minority populations and poor people. Not so much when it goes after the wealthy and powerful.

In the United States (‘US’), for three decades, advocates on behalf of business and professional interests have been claiming that American tort law is out of control, imposing unjustified costs on defendants amounting to billions and billions of dollars annually. American juries, which decide most torts cases, have been attacked as either wholly unpredictable or else predictably pro-plaintiff in their verdicts, as incapable of fairly resolving complex and often technically difficult issues presented to them, and as all too willing to award enormous sums to victims for ‘pain and suffering’ and ‘punitive damages.’

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Lawyers representing plaintiffs offer counterarguments to all these assertions. They strongly defend the jury as a vital American institution, viewing jury-based US tort law as a crucial form of consumer protection against the callous exercise of economic might by business interests who put profit ahead of safety. Large jury verdicts are said to properly reflect an easily affordable award of well-deserved compensation to people who have suffered terrible injuries. Victim advocates point out that the imposition of punitive damages is actually rather uncommon, and argue that, even if the instances in which they are awarded are a bit unpredictable, in a world in which not all egregious forms of misconduct can be identified and punished, unpredictability actually helps to keep management on its toes.

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Defence interests have mounted a multi-pronged effort, seeking both to make tort law generally more favorable to their side and to restrict the ability of juries to make blockbuster awards in individual cases. One strategy has been to try to influence judicially-determined common law developments. Because elected Governors in most States play key roles in appointing judges, especially to the State appellate courts, political pressure has mounted on Republican Governors to appoint judges who are pro-defendant. In the media, well-funded pro-business campaigns have widely publicised complaints about tort law. Although causal connections are difficult to establish, the upshot has been that, starting in the 1990s, many State courts have become less pro-plaintiff in their decisions. Moreover, lawyers for victims argue that pro-business efforts have also influenced jury attitudes, claiming that their clients now often receive lower tort damage awards than they would have won in the past for the same injuries.

A second strategy has been to carry the tort reform campaign to State legislatures, with the result that lawmakers are increasingly intruding in a pro-defence way on what traditionally has been an almost entirely judicially-created common law system. Along side broad-based pro-business groups, other defendant special interests have also pushed their own narrowly tailored agendas for tort relief. Physicians are the most important example, but by no means the only one. The alcohol, tobacco, and gun industries have also pushed narrow tort reform laws, as have municipal governments and privately owned public utilities.

https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/United_States_Tort_Reform_Wars_A.TORTS.pdf