Behind the scenes of their budgeting process this spring, leaders of the Oklahoma Legislature empowered a pair of influential attorneys to negotiate a grand deal on policy topics that have pitted business groups against trial lawyers for decades. With a package of tort reforms and a workers’ compensation change announced as part of the Fiscal Year 2026 budget deal, some rank-and-file lawmakers have spent the past week realizing that one chamber’s leadership largely traded appropriation decisions for the litigatory legislation being heard over the final two weeks of session.
“It was the top priority in the Senate, yes,” said House Appropriations and Budget Committee Chairman Trey Caldwell (R-Lawton). “Their whole budget centered on tort. They wouldn’t agree to any budgetary items until we got agreement on tort reform.”
An insurance agent and former mayor whose concerns with Oklahoma’s liability lawsuit climate have been shaped by his experiences, Senate President Pro Tempore Lonnie Paxton emphasized tort reform as a priority during the May 13 press conference announcing the year’s budget deal.
“There’s some great bills that are going to be coming across the finish line here on workers’ comp and tort reform as well,” said Paxton (R-Tuttle). “We’re signaling to the world that Oklahoma is open for business.”
As described in public hearings and lawmaker interviews with NonDoc, the 2026 tort reform and workers’ compensation agreement includes three bills making changes to five significant issues:
- SB 1168 makes changes to the Governmental Tort Claims Act, increasing payment caps on various claims against political subdivisions for the first time in 30 years and tying future increases to the Consumer Price Index. The bill also modifies how sewer backup claims are handled, eliminating the ability for claim amounts to be multiplied by the total members of a household, otherwise known as “stacking” claims. Instead, the bill increases the nuisance value cap was from $175,000 to $275,000 and the property value claim maximum from $25,000 to $75,000 — for a total $350,000 claim maximum;
- SB 453 creates a process for a tort plaintiff to request “expedited” action on cases claiming damages of $250,000 or less. The bill also adopts the federal Daubert standard for judicial approval of expert witnesses, and it establishes a pair of caps on non-economic damages — $500,000 on physical injuries and $1 million on mental health injuries. The physical injury cap can be nullified when a judge or jury finds that a permanent and substantial injury has occurred; and
- SB 642 makes changes to the Administrative Workers’ Compensation Act, such as allowing a general contractor to pay for the workers’ compensation insurance of a sub-contractor while still protecting a third-party claim that an employee of that sub-contractor may have. The bill also increases the maximum weekly partial-permanent disability payments to injured workers from $360 to $375.
Rep. Chris Kannady (R-OKC) negotiated the agreement on behalf of House Republicans, meeting with leaders from the State Chamber of Commerce, plaintiff attorneys with the Oklahoma Association for Justice and the chief negotiator designated by Paxton — former Senate President Pro Tempore Glenn Coffee, an attorney who authored a massive 2009 tort reform bill largely dismantled by the courts for constitutional violations that seem to have been avoided in this year’s effort.
“I have seen years out here where negotiating anything no matter how minor was very difficult, and that wasn’t the case this year,” Kannady said. “I think that’s because we have solid leadership in both chambers, and the pro temp and the speaker really led from the front and empowered people to be involved in a process to try to get to the right result rather than bickering and politics. I think it worked extremely well.”
Coffee, whom Paxton hired as a “senior legal consultant” in the Senate this year, agreed with Kannady’s assessment, although he emphasized that he was “here to support the pro temp’s agenda.”
“I don’t have agendas. But it did bring back memories, and I was happy to assist in bringing about what the pro temp was trying to get done, and so it’s a good feeling to be helpful,” Coffee said. “You know, the pro temp and Rep. Kannady have very different views on what’s good policy, but we had good, frank exchanges. People operated in good faith and found a way to get some language done. I think it went very well.”
‘The shock is that it was moved that high up’
While those in the proverbial room for tort reform conversations believe they went well this session, their connection to Fiscal Year 2026 budget negotiations posed a bit of an unusual scenario — one that left some senators surprised about how Paxton had prioritized the topic.
“We knew tort reform was a big deal for a lot of us in the conservative side — tort reform has always been something we’re interested in. I think the priority level that it was placed at within the budget probably surprised some,” said Sen. David Bullard (R-Durant). “That’s the shock is that it was moved that high up, that it was tied to the budget. I also don’t think that’s going to be a problem. I mean, the bulk of our caucus as a whole I think are in favor of tort reform of some kind.”
But other senators were less surprised.
“I knew it was a priority,” said Sen. Casey Murdock (R-Felt).
While Murdock said he felt some important funding requests from senators were omitted from this year’s budget — such as improvements for the Woodward Airport — he said he is “not blaming tort reform for it.”
“We’re a week out. We’ve got to land this plane. The tort reform, the governor wanted it. It’s about landing the plane and getting the work for Oklahomans done, and we can’t get everything we want. We get as good a deal as we can,” Murdock said. “You’ve got three legs of the stool, and every one of them has a say in landing this plane. I’m hurt that I didn’t get this airport deal for my district, but the bigger scope is what’s good for Oklahoma.”
Asked about the situation Tuesday, Paxton said he believes the tort reform and workers’ compensation reform package is good for Oklahoma and long overdue. Paxton first ran for the State Senate seat he now holds in 1996, losing to an incumbent.
“I look back at those mailers or those campaign cards that I had, and one of the things on there said Oklahoma’s workers compensation rates are some of the very highest in the nation, with our benefits to our injured workers some of the lowest in the nation,” Paxton recalled. “So what’s the problem? The problem is that we have too many attorneys involved in maybe a litigious system instead of a system where we can get good settlements for the injured workers. So it became an issue for me back in 1996 when I started understanding the problems that we had in Oklahoma.”
Paxton acknowledged that he tied the tort reform conversations with budget negotiations.
“You say, ‘Was it involved in budget negotiations?’ Everything’s involved in everything,” Paxton said. “You see bills held up, bills move forward, and everything works together. So I’m not a big fan of a lot of spending, but I know a lot of people have projects that they think are important, and you know, I thought the workers comp, I thought the torts, I thought all those things were important things to do. So I think we found
a reasonable way to work all that out.”
While Paxton has owned his connection of tort reform to budget negotiations now that the deals are done, the situation caused consternation over the past two weeks in the Senate GOP Caucus.
“They didn’t realize that, honestly, the pro temp’s only priority was tort reform,” said a legislator with direct knowledge of the conversations on the condition of anonymity.
Caldwell said budget negotiators were well aware of Paxton’s priority.
“It was definitely known, and that’s what their leadership expressed to us,” Caldwell said Tuesday. “They communicated that going back three, four, five weeks ago.”
Workers’ compensation deal harkens back to recent history
For nearly a century, Oklahoma’s workers’ compensation cases in Oklahoma were handled in a judicial system. That meant if an employee was injured on the job, he or she would sue their employer in court.
But in 2014, the state transitioned to an administrative system. Today, workers’ compensation claims are handled by the Oklahoma Workers’ Compensation Commission, which is funded by fees from workers’ compensation insurance policies taken out by employers. The commission adjudicates cases between an employer and employee if the two parties can’t agree on compensation. State workers filed more than 80,000 claims in 2022 and 2023. About 15,000 a year end up before the WCC.
When SB 1062 was passed by the Legislature in 2013, supporters of the reform argued it would streamline an unwieldy process while lowering workers’ compensation insurance premiums for employers. Former Rep. Leslie Osborn co-authored that legislation, and she now serves as labor commissioner.
“The main thought at the time was that we were the last state in the nation that still had a judicial system,” Osborn said. “Over the years, there had been a movement to go to administrative systems, which were a little different. (…) And now all 50 states have much more similar administrative-type systems, which do more remediation.”
The new system was also meant to save employers money. At the time of the law’s passage, Scott Biggs, currently a WCC commissioner and then a state representative, said only a few insurers were writing workers’ compensation policies in the Oklahoma. Today, Biggs said there are dozens, with the net effect being 60 percent lower premiums because so many companies are competing for business.
“Sen. (Anthony) Sykes was one of the authors, and he was asked if we look back 10 years, how will we know if this has been successful?” Biggs recalled. “And one of the comments was, if we have more insurance writers writing premiums. So we’ve gone from three to, if we count them all up, there’s over 150 now.”
Still, longtime workers compensation attorney Bob Burke filed more than 100 challenges on the new workers’ compensation law with the Oklahoma Supreme Court. Several still haven’t been decided, he said, but victories came at a high rate.
“We knocked out a bunch of crap,” Burke said. “I probably shouldn’t put it like that. But for example, one (case) that was unanimous was that the [law] said if you had a leg cut off and if you missed more than two medical appointments, your benefits ‘shall’ be cut off. Not may. Will be. (…) I was so miffed at the passage of the new law that I put a sign up in the attorney’s lounge at the court that said, ‘Bob Burke will handle all appeals of the new law to the Supreme Court free and without expense.'”
Osborn’s old House district included a Delta Faucet factory in Chickasha. In the years before she was elected, the company had been threatening to leave Oklahoma solely because of the cost of workers’ compensation insurance.
“I had gone down to that manufacturing facility several times, and they had been saying that if we couldn’t get workers’ comp rates down, they kept saying they were going to close the plant,” Osburn recalled. “They had factories in Indiana and one in Tennessee, but they were looking to close this one. So in that final year, it seemed more impassioned, and they said their rates were roughly twice what they were paying in those other states.”
Delta closed the facility in 2006, well before the reforms Osborn co-authored went into effect. But Osborn saw the impact of the closure firsthand and hoped to avoid a pattern that repeated itself in other places across the state.
“Delta made the decision to close, and that was a huge hit to Chickasha and Grady County,” she recalled.
The history of Delta leaving Grady County encapsulates the long-standing debate and conflict between attorneys like Burke and business leaders’ desire to grow Oklahoma’s economy.
“It’s finding a balance, because sometimes injured workers might not have the voice big business people do, and that’s where I felt my role was,” Osborn said. “It was an overwhelming amount of information, but I felt like it was my role to make sure that we didn’t forget about the injured worker.”
The initial results were mixed, and Burke still believes the case for reform was overblown in the first place.
“I mean, people were always saying that, ‘Oh, we have the highest rates in the country and the worst benefits,” Burke claimed. “But that wasn’t true. We were in the middle of the pack in rates and in the middle of the pack on benefits. I thought we had a pretty good system.”
Nonetheless, Osburn found herself trying to balance competing interests — something Kannady has tried to do in the House of Representatives this year.
“The State Chamber might disagree with me, but I believe that the things Bob had overturned actually cleaned it up to make it much better legislation that was effective,” Osborn said.
For its part, the State Chamber of Oklahoma supported the 2013 reform bill and again engaged legislative leaders this year to address fallout from the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s May 2024 decision in Knox v. Oklahoma Gas and Electric, a ruling that said a general contractor could not pay the workers’ compensation insurance premiums of a subcontractor. Making that possible is the key component of SB 642 this year from the perspective of business leaders, while attorneys and advocates for injured workers are pleased with how the bill increases their monthly payments.
“The 2014 workers’ compensation reforms have been a win for both businesses and workers. Under the old judicial system, the process incentivized litigation, creating an adversarial environment that delayed benefits, prevented injured workers from returning to work, and drove up legal costs for businesses,” said Brent Skarky, senior vice president of communications for the State Chamber. “Since the reforms, appeals have dropped dramatically, and the number of cases resolved without trial has increased, allowing injured workers to access their benefits and return to work more quickly — a critical improvement, especially when even a few weeks’ delay can be devastating for someone unable to earn a paycheck.
“At the same time, the reforms have helped reduce overall costs: The number of companies writing workers’ compensation insurance policies has grown, creating more competition in the market and driving down premium costs from $961.5 million in 2013 to $647.9 million in 2023. These improvements show that a more efficient system can both lower costs for employers and better serve injured workers.”
Beyond supporting SB 1168, SB 453 and SB 642 — which are awaiting final passage over the next nine days — the State Chamber has also pushed SB 95 this session, which was signed into law May 6 to reduce liability for employers who provide internships.
“SB 95 [will expand] access to internships and work-based learning opportunities for Oklahoma high school students by addressing a key barrier: liability concerns for businesses hosting students on-site,” Skarky said. “Unclear law around workers’ compensation coverage discourages many employers from offering these opportunities, and not all school districts have strong partnerships to navigate the complexity. As a result, work-based learning exists only in small pockets. This lack of access leaves students without critical exposure to industries and limits their ability to connect classroom learning to future careers, contributing to Oklahoma’s broader workforce challenges, where participation rates are low and skills gaps are high.”
Costs, benefits analysis
On the employer side, workers’ compensation insurance costs have fallen. According to data from the WCC, employers have saved more than $313 million on premiums since 2014.
In the final year the old workers’ compensation system was in effect, employers paid more than $900 million in premiums. In 2023, that figure fell to $647.9 million. Compusource is the largest player in the market. The company wrote about $214 million in policies in 2023. Zurich American is the second most prolific with $22 million. But they have plenty of competition with more than 100 insurance companies in the Oklahoma market. In contrast, California has raised its workers’ compensation rates by 11 percent this year.
But while costs have gone down for employers, Oklahoma’s payouts to those who are injured have been the lowest in the six-state region that includes Arkansas, Texas, Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado.
The average weekly PPD rate in Oklahoma is currently $360. Burke said Kansas has the highest with $746. Arkansas workers can expect to receive a maximum of $593 per week while Texas workers get up to $741. Colorado and Missouri workers are eligible for up to $500 and $547 each week.
Under the compromise in this year’s SB 642, Oklahoma’s figure would be increased to $375.
Attorney Eliot Yaffe, whose law firm employs Kannady, represents injured workers and has seen the system change over the last decade. In his view, it has not for the better. Recently, Yaffe has represented a 21-year-old man who suffered a traumatic injury while on the job. The worker lost his hand, and the workers’ compensation insurance carrier for his company declined to cover pain management treatment.
“Essentially, with the passage of [the 2013 bill], injured workers just automatically started receiving less money for their permanent injury,” Yaffe said. “To give some context, the [partial-permanent disability] rate in 2010 was $359. When the law was passed in 2014, the rate went down to $323 a week. And as it stands right now, it’s slowly crept back up to $360. So when you think about the price of literally anything — a loaf of bread, milk — those prices have gone up over the last decade and a half. It’s punitive.”
Disagreement over past change lingers as new reforms loom
Not every injury workers in Oklahoma sustain is as traumatic as Yaffe’s clients. According to Biggs with the Workers Compensation Commission, the most common injury claims are for falls, slips or tripping. They account for about 30 percent of the annual claims and often occur in restaurant settings. Strains account for 29 percent. Struck or injured by a vehicle or object represents 15 percent. Cuts, punctures, or scrapes are about 6 percent, while burns and scalds are about 2 percent of claims.
“We see a lot of kitchen accidents in restaurants as well as slips and falls,” Biggs said. “It varies. For example, we frequently see oil field injuries, and those are usually pretty traumatic injuries. There are car accidents. The injuries really touch on all industries.”
When workers are injured on the job, but aren’t permanently disabled they are paid temporary total disability benefits. Those initially declined as well under the current system, Yaffe said.
“When an injured worker is off work, they are paid [temporary total disability],” Yaffe said. “Those TTD rates are tied into the state’s average weekly wage. And when the law was first passed, there was an automatic 30 percent reduction off the state’s average weekly wage. That was rectified in 2019. It was fixed.”
But other problems exist, he said. While about 25 percent of Oklahoma businesses self-insure, 75 percent don’t. That creates plenty of work for all involved, and in some cases, their insurers are slow to pay.
“There are countless examples of injured workers who have not received the medical treatment they need,” Yaffe said. “And then they have to go out on their own and put it on their health insurance and pay the deductibles and the out-of-pocket expenses. In fact, what we’re seeing a lot today is when there’s a delay in medical treatment from workers’ compensation — because, you know, the new workers’ comp is supposed to be more efficient and provide treatment quicker. But what we’re seeing a lot of today is people that need care, they’re just putting it on their health insurance because they’re going to get treated much faster by doing it that way, and then we just circle back after the fact and try to get the commission to order the insurance companies to pay the bills.”
Burke said when that happens, it can create financial consequences for workers.
“I’ve had hundreds of people over 40 years who have gotten behind on their house payments,” Burke said. “I’ve seen them lose cars and houses, and if they’re renting, kicked out of their apartments. And a lot of that is sometimes in a case where an insurance company simply puts it off for six months before they ever pay them. They deny the claim, and then, ultimately, they are forced to pay them back, but by that time, [the person has] lost their car or their house. And there’s no penalty against the insurance company for doing that. An insurance company under this law can simply not pay anyone until six months from the injury, and there’s no penalty at all.”
The benefit rates are set by the Legislature, Biggs said.
Under the old judicial system, payments for injuries like back problems were considerably more than they are now.
A worker in Oklahoma with a back injury will receive a set amount of up to $25,920. In Kansas, that number is about $57,000.
“An injured worker today in 2025 for a back surgery will only get about half what he or she would have gotten 15 years ago for permanent disability,” Burke said. “In the old days, you got $60,000 or $70,000, which is nothing compared to what you were making, but it was still considerably more than what is paid today.”
Biggs said he believes the current system facilitates faster outcomes for workers than the old judicial system, which often required finding an attorney, getting on a docket and going through a trial. But there are still bottlenecks in the current system. Getting workers treated can be time-consuming, in large part because of the relatively few doctors who will see workers’ comp patients in the state.
This is a common problem facing Biggs, who recently spent time meeting with administrators and doctors at one of the state’s largest medical providers in the hope of increasing the ranks of physicians who will see those patients. Biggs said the state currently has one pulmonologist seeing workers’ compensation patients.
“So if you’re in an oil field accident up in Woodward, where do you go? You could go to the hospital there, but they may be limited in their ability to treat traumatic injuries,” he said. “In oil field accidents, there is often a high level of trauma. So you’re getting on a helicopter and flying to Amarillo or Oklahoma City. We’re losing medical providers with corporations taking over medical practices. It’s become where Oklahoma City and Tulsa are the hubs.”
Biggs said large medical providers often don’t want the headache of dealing with workers’ compensation patients.
“I understand sometimes our patients are only 2 or 5 percent of their book of business. I think that’s the number one area we need to improve on, access to providers,” Biggs said.
The more specialized the treatment, the harder it is to find doctors. And that often results in long drives for those who don’t live near the state’s two largest population centers.
“If you’ve got a spinal injury, there’s a handful of doctors in Oklahoma City and a couple in Tulsa, and that’s it,” Biggs said. “When you’re talking about specialty issues, that’s even worse. In Oklahoma, we have the presumption that certain cancers for firefighters are related to work exposure and are work-related injury. But we only have one reliable oncologist to see those patients. So if you’re a firefighter in Guymon, unless you can get to Amarillo, you’re driving into Oklahoma City.”
‘The negotiation was in good faith’
But despite the issue with medical providers, Biggs said on the whole, injured workers are getting back to work quicker than they did under the previous system.
“The time from first report of an injury to seeing a physician to being able to return to work, that gap has shrunk,” Biggs said. “We’re getting injured workers back to work. Back to where they need to be (better) than we were a decade ago. At the same time, there’s a sense of consistency with our awards. You will always hear attorneys saying they cut awards. I wouldn’t necessarily say we’ve cut awards, but we have leveled the playing field. We still have judicial discretion, but you don’t have one judge giving $100,000 and another judge giving $10,000, which is the way it used to be back in the day.”
Burke, however, said it’s taking as long as ever for workers’ compensation claimants to see doctors and get back to work. But he doesn’t see the current system as all bad. He notes that in part, owing to challenges to the system, injured workers are in a better position now than they were when the reform was passed.
“It’s still totally tilted in favor of the employer,” Burke said. “Now, not as much as it was when it was passed, because we’ve gotten 69 provisions thrown out. The Supreme Court and the Court of Civil Appeals have just knocked out so many things. That was a denial of due process, just a fundamental denial of it.”
But there are still things that can be better, he said.
“I would increase the permanent disability rate and the temporary total disability,” Burke said.
In SB 642, the Legislature is prepared to increase the permanent disability rate, which Paxton said underscores how the full deal on workers’ compensation and torts is a compromise.
“It’s just everybody working together for different priorities, all for the same purpose of making Oklahoma a better place,” Paxton said. “People have different things that they’re interested in. Mine was in what we’ve done with the tort and comp reforms. So I think it worked out good for everybody.”
Kannady agreed, saying that while some attorneys may view parts of the compromises unfavorably, the risk of inaction could have been worse.
“I don’t like to categorize it as the business community vs. the trial bar. It’s really people vs. business. And most of the time, issues involving the general public and business align. But obviously adversarial things happen, and I believe that, yes, there are things that help people and things that help business, and at the end of the day I believe we got to where we should get to make the policy balanced,” Kannady said. “One of the things you have to do in negotiation is not silo yourself in a room and not seek input. Of course the trial bar doesn’t like changes. People generally don’t like changes. It makes it more difficult. There will be more litigation. But they were engaged just like all the other parties were engaged, and they were engaged in good faith. So sure, if you ask people from that group, some are not going to like it. But I think they understand the negotiation was in good faith, but fighting it — and I think they know this — would likely end up putting policy in a worse position, and that’s not what we need.”
A separate bill carried by Kannady — HB 2144 to authorize physicians to file “bad faith” claims against insurance companies on behalf of patients who have been denied coverage for recommended procedures and treatments — was part of the year’s tort reform negotiations, but the expansive proposal stalled during negotiations as agreement was reached on other topics.
“Once we got into negotiators and looked at the totality, I decided to set aside my bill, which will still be alive next year for extra discussion,” Kannady said of HB 2144.
House Speaker Kyle Hilbert (R-Bristow) praised the chambers’ ability to negotiate a budget deal and deals on tort reform and workers’ compensation “with a lot of spinning plates in the air.”
“I think it’s probably an oversimplification to say poor perform led to budget deal because tort reform was part of the conversation,” Hilbert said. “There were a lot of pieces that were part of the conversation, and we relented on a lot of things that the Senate wanted. They they gave us some things that the House wanted.”
(Clarification: This article was updated at 9:40 p.m. Wednesday, May 21, to clarify details about the former workers’ compensation court system.)
