Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Hi. Welcome back to the House Judiciary Committee. It's Tuesday afternoon, March thirty first. We're gonna, I think, finish up our drive by of S 218. And, Adam, do you wanna join us first? Thank you for being here and thank you for your flexibility. And I will assume you've been patient.

[Adam Necrason]: Mr. Chair, members of the committee, I am Adam Nekrassen, Nekrassen Group here with Vermont Association for Justice. We're going to be testifying in support of this bill, this version as passed by the senate. I believe this is our ninth or tenth testimony. We met most of that in this committee on this bill, and that we appreciate the work this committee did on it last year to move it from the introduced version, which we were vigorously opposing to the as passed version come to you, which in our sense balances access to justice with premises safety and protecting the environment. This bill says you are immune unless you haven't been reasonable in your care of your premises. Right? And so this is the balance you're looking to strike. We believe this bill codifies the common law by using an affirmative defense model. You're balancing, keeping the access to justice open for the backing up, refreshing your memory. Commercial parking lot, elderly consumer coming in to pick up her prescription drugs, because this is a business and she's an invitee to come to commerce, common law has for hundreds of years placed a high expectation on that business owner that the pathway will be safe. Having said that, this is Vermont, ice is natural, there's dangerous conditions. And the way the common law deals with that is by having an allocation of responsibility between someone who gets hurt and the business owner, and a jury of 12 sorts that all out. What this bill does is leave the question to the jury, where they can look at the manual of these guidelines that the agency of natural resources will create and say, did the business owner use those guidelines properly? If they did, then they can't be held liable. This is this idea of regulation where it's understandable, it's reasonable, it's clear for all the parties involved. It helps the business, it helps the salt applicators. Here's the rules, literally up the road. For us, it's about sidewalks and parking lots and where people are walking and risking getting hurt, but it gives everybody clarity. This is what's expected of you if you're a business bringing people to your property. And then if you follow these guidelines, you have an affirmative defense if you're sued for personal injury.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Fairly straightforward, I think. Questions? Any questions for I don't see. So thank you very much. Thank you for your work over the last twelve months on this as well. Thank you, mister chairman. We'll hear from the Vermont League of City in town tonight. You have to keep us occupied for, like, half hour or so. Oh, jeez. Well, just hit by yourself on the record and good proceed. Thanks for being here, and thanks for your flexibility.

[Josh Hanford]: For the record, Josh Hanford, director of intergovernmental relations at the Mont League of Cities and Towns. Believe testified on this bill last year. Also, we were in the senate and environment committees. You know, our official position is we're not opposing or supporting this bill. We raised sort of some concerns with what would have gained our support last year if it was more comprehensive of the monetary cap that the state has. We've been asking for that same monetary cap that the state has of $500,000 per person and 2,000,000 per per occurrence. Appreciative that there's training going to local roads that will help some municipalities manage their salt, maybe reduce some application. But don't feel that this sort of very specific carve outs and the protections granted will result in a lot of change in practice. I think municipalities, they don't want us apply more salt than they need to. It's expensive. There are shortages, but they want to keep people safe, and they want to manage that balance. And there may be a situation where this helps. It's a voluntary training, but we really were looking for a little bit more monetary protection commensurate with the states to really get on board with fully supporting this. But as I said, we're

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: not opposed to it either. Does does no harm to to municipalities. Great. Questions? Any questions? David? I appreciate it. Thank you again for your flexibility being able to be available to weigh in. Alright, I don't think we have to do any strong formal or anything. I think essentially we didn't see any red flags, as far as I can tell, at least in our parts. That's affirmative. The fencing said, what do you think? I don't think we need, I mean, essentially we looked at it and there was nothing that jumped out at us that we needed to deal with. So, all right. We have time for law, that, food. We're gonna have a public hearing at 05:00 just for folks. This is something that we will be there. It will be a committee meeting with the Senate judiciary in the chamber, well, the House. And we'll be there just to listen. We have, I think, 60 witnesses signed up, so they'll have two minutes each. We'll try to move things along as quickly as we can. And we'll just be sitting there not asking questions or answering questions or commenting, just sitting there to take all this in from the, I think a lot of the folks who were out there in South Burlington on March 11 at this protest. So we will adjourn from here until Do I adjourn till 05:00?