Coffee With Q: Leadership Insights with FJA President Christopher Ligori

Hello, welcome to Palm Beach, Florida. Today we are hosting our subject matter masterclass show from the world-renowned Breakers Historic Resort Hotel. I'm Renee Pera, legal news reporter with Coffee with Q. I'm here with another edition of The Elite Legal Professional featuring Christopher Lagori. The newly sworn-in president of the Florida Justice Association, FJA. Chris is a Tampa Bay trial attorney and has spent nearly 30 years advocating for injured Floridians. Now leading the FJA in its 65th year, he continues its mission to protect individuals from negligence, uphold justice across the state of Florida. Welcome, Chris. Glad you were able to, uh, come and answer a few questions about yourself, your passion for justice, Thank you, René.

I appreciate it.

Chris, we've known each other for many years. You've always been involved in fighting to keep the civil justice courts open for Floridians. With your headquarters in Tallahassee as the new president, FJA is essentially one of the largest plaintiffs' advocacy groups in the U.S. and the most important in Florida. Why the need to be involved personally?

I'm born and raised in Florida. I'm a 4th generation, and I feel like I can help. And I think I have been a, a big help in Florida cuz we're under attack by the insurance industry. Uh, they're not paying for houses to be fixed when you have a hurricane. They're not paying claims when people are injured. Always trying to put their thumb on the scale of justice, making sure people can't get their injuries redressed when there's an accident or there's a defective product, or there's a You know, pesticide that's defective. They're trying to get immunity from really any responsibility, which puts all of us in danger. Yeah. I'm a 4th generation Floridian, and I see the insurance companies becoming more and more powerful every day. And they've really put the thumb on their scales of justice, and they've, they've really started to get even worse than they were before. And they were pretty horrible in the past. And we fight to make sure the, the little guy, the average person, can get a fair shake when they go to court. And it's really the 7th Amendment to the United States Constitution calls for redress of injuries with the civil jury. And we want to make sure people can get to the courthouse and get their full injuries redressed when they go there and not be limited in any way.

FJA has been fighting for people of Florida for nearly 70 years, citizens who have either been severely injured or died in a wrongful death event. Maybe you can explain the importance of the 7th Amendment and how it is critical in keeping the civil courts open and everyone safe in Florida.

Well, the 7th Amendment, like I said earlier, is the part of the United States Constitution That allows for a trial by jury for civil cases, and that was so important to our founding fathers. I mean, it's like the Second Amendment, the First Amendment. There are no redheaded stepchildren in the amendment to the Constitution. All of them are incredibly important. So what we need to make sure that we do is keep the courthouse doors open to everyone and not have the insurance companies or big businesses continue to make sure that people can't get access to the court to the courthouse by getting immunity. Uh, for hurting people and being, you know, pesticide. They want immunity with dangerous pesticides. For example, there are pesticides that are made in Russia and China that are not allowed to be used there, but yet they ship to the United States and they don't want to be responsible for the harm it causes. They don't want to be responsible for paying a, a hurricane claim. For example, you get your roof ripped off or there's roof damage. They don't want to have to pay for that. So they want to get immunity or they want to make it very difficult for someone to actually make a claim. And there's a lot of people out here being wronged in the state, and we're out there trying to defend them to prevent that from being happening.

We would be in a bad state without the 7th Amendment.

Oh, we'd be in a horrible state. And the times where they've, where they've made it difficult to file a claim or impossible to file a claim, you see the most abuse by the insurance companies.

Yesterday you were sworn in as the new leader of the FJA. You've been part of the leadership team for at least 5 years, I think longer. What does that mean for you next year? Could you share a little bit about what is going to happen?

Well, yes, it's actually 16 years. I've been on the— one of the officers for the past 4 years is how it works. So you're right, it's at least 5 years. It's actually a little bit longer than that. You know what, it is— what I see coming up in the next year kind of depends on what happens right now. The governor has a bill to expand sovereign immunity. What that means is the state is immune if any of their employees causes a crash. For example, you've got a sheriff's officer. I can think of one case right now where he actually was doing 90 miles an hour, to actually get to a location where there was like 2 people fighting on a bus. I mean, no allegation of weapons or anything dangerous. There's 2 people fighting on a bus, 90 miles an hour, veers off the roadway into the median and T-bones somebody and kills them. You know, they are limited in the state to $200,000, $300,000. In other words, one person can get— the max is $200,000. From the entity. And on top of that, then they have to then go to the state of Florida, the legislature, and get a claims bill passed. The legislature has to actually authorize payment for anything more than that. And that is a huge problem because people can't get their injuries redressed. Okay? In other words, they have to wait years and years for that to happen if the state of Florida will do it, and they can decide not to pay the whole thing. So that's a huge problem. We had a bill passed that upped the limits to $350,000, $500,000, which is $350,000 for 1 person, $500,000 for an entire accident. And that makes it easier for people to get a lot more of, you know, their injuries covered. When you get into an accident, say, with a sheriff's officer, or you get somebody such as an employee, somebody works for DCF, or just any employee for the state, it could be A sheriff's office, could be a local entity, could be a statewide entity. It doesn't matter. They all have sovereign immunity. So if by getting $350,000, you have a better chance of getting their injuries redressed right away, getting them paid, and then down the road, it lessens the effect of how much has to actually go forward with the claims bill.

Sovereign immunity means that no one is responsible. That's what sovereign immunity is?

Sovereign— yes, sovereign immunity means that they They have immunity from being sued at all. Think of it as the law comes from like Old England, right? That's the history of the United States. So they got a— they adopted a lot of the laws from there, a lot of the concepts. It's like you can't sue the king. The king is the state of Florida. They've passed laws to allow that to happen, but it, it really handcuffs people and strings out the ability to actually get The wrongs, you know, some sort of harm, depending what it is. It could be, like I said, an accident or something along those lines. Getting them paid, right? Because a lot of people need—they have medical bills, they have past medical bills that have to be paid, they have future medical bills that have to be paid, and then they have the human damages, you know, loss of enjoyment life, pain and suffering, things inconvenience. All of those things go into a judgment, and those things are limited because of. The limits on sovereign immunity and then the hurdles they have to go through that takes years to be compensated.

So with sovereign immunity, there's no possibility for redress, no ability to get proper compensation for pain, suffering, loss of wages, things like that?

Yeah, they can be. That's exactly what it does. Either limits it or makes it incredibly difficult and Almost impossible. I mean, there's been people who waited 15, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. That's the extreme extreme. Okay, but that was children from the Dozer School that had to wait you know decades and decades to get their injuries redressed by the state. That actually took place about three years ago. So you're talking about the 30s and 40s and 50s all the way until today. So most of them don't take that long, but you can say about 10 or 15 years. And the whole time they're suffering, they're picking up more and more medical bills. They're picking up, you know, they've got more injuries they have to deal with. They have more care. And it's really not fair to the people who are harmed at no fault to themselves. I'm sorry. And, you know, that's just something that needs to be fixed.

FJA is widely recognized as the state's largest civil trial bar, and it's also a political action group. FJA has always focused on the rights of consumers. How many members are you? What should people understand about FJA as a legal and a political action lobbying group?

Well, we have over 3,000 members all over the state. So everywhere from— you can go to Pensacola to Key West, we have members. What our focus is, is to protect the rights of people of the state of Florida, the average person, and even people who are wealthy really can't afford to pay someone hourly to get access to the court, to the courthouse. So one of the things we try to protect is the fact that by having access, you could do things on a contingency fee. In other words, we get paid based on the result, and that way people don't have to come out of pocket and pay somebody, you know, $300, $400, $500 an hour to work on a case. When we know the other side could pay those bills. So one of the things we want to do is make sure people have access to the courthouse. We want to make sure that we are able to have the influence in order to kill bad bills. So in other words, we have to have a political action committee. We have to fund campaigns and lobby people so that they understand the ramifications of bills that are filed. And we are the only interest in the state of Florida, funded interest, that actually stands up for consumers. No one else out there can be funded and do that. There's people who will come in and they basically have to beg for help. There, a lot of them are fighting massive business interests. The people we represent and we stand up for don't have the ability to have political action committees. They don't have the ability to lobby people, the members of the legislature. They don't have some sort of war chest. They don't have lobbyists. They, they have nothing if we didn't step forward. We are the only people really standing up who has the ability to kill bills, and we do it all the time. And we also try to put forward proactive bills in order to make it better for Floridians. Cheaper too, cheaper for their insurance. But But also making sure that they can get the help they need when they need it.

It's an incredible job that FJA does. The last time I spoke with someone, there's approximately 1,000-plus special interest groups fighting for their own interests. And there's possibly, what, 3, FJA being the most important one, fighting for consumer rights.

Yeah, there are others. They're not funded. So in other words, they, like I said, have to go in and pretty much just beg people to help them. And it's generally not very effective when you're talking about— well, it depends on the organization, but not very effective when it comes to getting people to go your way when you've got these big business interests that have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes millions of dollars in the campaigns. So what, um, you know, we really are the only line of defense. I mean, let's just put it that way. We are the only line of defense to stopping these bad bills and the insurance companies and big business from being able to get away with murder. And literally, that's what they want. They want to get away with murder if that's the case.

And the bad bills are usually bills that deny regular folk, Floridian citizens, residents access to the civil justice system.

Right. It's either they, they want bills that would give them immunity or they— what they're very good at is creating hurdles. So, for example, sinkhole cases. All right. And I'm doing this just— we also help homeowners with hurricane claims and, you know, any kind of wind damage from, you know, storms, sinkholes, fires. We don't have that many members who do that, but we stand up. That's a big part of what we do because that's what we believe in. Keeping this, the doors to the courthouse open. So what the insurance industry is very slick with, with sinkhole coverage is they went and made it very difficult or impossible to actually have a claim. And what, what benefit is that to them? A, they don't pay out anything, but yet they're still billing you for coverage that they know it's near impossible for you to trigger. All right. So that's one of their biggest, biggest tricks. So, you know, You can get complete immunity, or they can make it so difficult and almost impossible. It's almost immunity for them. That's why in Florida you've seen denial rates with insurance companies skyrocket in the last few years, because in 2023 they got a lot of what they wanted because of the governor, the former speaker, and the former Senate president. So it's made it very difficult for, for people with, say, hurricane claims to get paid. And, and fully paid too. They'll pay a little bit to make it go away, but they won't even come close to what it's really worth.

On a personal, I guess your personal journey, what drew you to specialize in the practice area of law for the injured?

You know, it's, it's wanting to help people. You know, you want to feel good when you're, when a job's done. You want to feel like you actually, you helped somebody and you made their lives better. And that is a great feeling to have. And that's what drew me to practicing personal injury law and working with the FJA.

Was there a pivotal case or moment that defined your path?

You know, there's a, there's a, a couple of them. Uh, I can tell you right now, my mother stepped up, uh, when I was young and I was diagnosed with dyslexia and would not take the— it was back in the '70s. They didn't know that much about it and actually got in there and just said, nope. We're not gonna accept that you're saying that he can't go to college or things of that nature. So she stepped up and my parents, you know, sacrificed and put me through schools. And that motivated me to always really make sure they were proud of me and that their belief and faith in me wasn't, you know, wasn't misplaced.

She fought for you.

They fought for me. She fought for you. That's great. They fought for me very, very hard. And they sacrificed a lot. Because they wouldn't—

They didn't want to let you, uh, go to class, I guess, because of your issue.

Well, what, yeah, what happened was the teacher said that, look, he's never going to college, out of the question, will probably never graduate high school, would probably just get a GED. And my parents said, absolutely not. My mom's like, my son's, that's not my son. He's going to go to college. If he wants to pick up a trade or whatever he wants to do, he's going to do it with a college degree. You know, we come from a working-class background, so I mean, that's normal for my family to be in a trade. But she wanted me to at least have the degree so I would have the flexibility. So obviously I graduated high school, graduated college, went to law school, and have been practicing for over 30 years. And I've really wanted to make sure that my mother and my father knew that their faith in me was not misplaced, that, you know, they could be proud of me and say, hey, we You know, we— my son made us proud and we did the right thing.

Well, I'm sure a lot of people, if they could see you now, would say they were definitely really wrong about what they were telling you.

Hopefully so. Hopefully so.

Well, thanks, Chris, for coming on the show today and sharing your time and insight into the complex world of legal and political advocacy. I'm René Perrot, legal news reporter with Coffee with Q. Tune into our show next time with another legal professional who will discuss and educate us on a trending topic of the day. It was so good to have you on.

Thank you, Renee. I appreciate it.

Yeah, wonderful.