Alabama Senator receives Business Champion Award for ‘restoring common sense to the law’

PELHAM, Ala. — The Business Council of Alabama President and CEO William J. Canary on Wednesday presented state Sen. Cam Ward with the organization’s inaugural Business Champion Award for sponsoring legislation that seeks to prevent harm to Alabama businesses due to dual Supreme Court rulings.

Canary presented the award to Ward at the Greater Shelby County Chamber of Commerce’s Community Luncheon at the Pelham Civic Complex and Ice Arena. Chamber of Commerce Association of Alabama President and CEO Jeremy Arthur and Lisa McMahon, 2015 chair of the Greater Shelby County Chamber of Commerce, joined Canary in presenting the award.

Ward, R-Alabaster, is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Ward sponsored SB 80, legislation that overturns the Alabama Supreme Court’s adoption of a novel legal theory that could have harmed Alabama’s businesses and the state’s business climate. This legislation was a priority of the BCA for the 2015 regular legislative session. It was signed into law by Governor Bentley (R) in May.

“Sen. Ward led the charge in the Alabama Legislature to right this wrong,” Canary told Yellowhammer. “He understood the negative ramifications this Supreme Court ruling would have had on Alabama’s business climate, and his unwavering leadership helped garner wide bipartisan support in the Legislature.”

The legislation became necessary after the Supreme Court set the legal community on notice in 2013 in the Weeks v. Wyeth case and then again on rehearing the same case in 2014. The court held that a brand-name drug manufacturer can be liable—on a “fraud” theory—for physical injuries caused by a generic drug product that it neither made nor sold.

The BCA filed an amicus brief in the Weeks case along with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, urging the Supreme Court to reverse itself and warning that adoption of the aberrant “innovator-liability” theory would once again make Alabama a magnet for frivolous lawsuits.

After the Supreme Court refused to right its own wrong in the 2014 rehearing, Senator Ward sponsored legislation to “restore common sense to the law.”

Ward served two terms in the House, before being elected to the Senate in 2010, and reelected in 2014. He earned a law degree from Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham in 1996 and is Executive Director of the Industrial Development Board of Alabaster. Ward also serves as president of the Alabama Law Institute.

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— Elizabeth BeShears (@LizEBeesh) January 21, 2015