The Mississippi Economic Council and other business groups have made half-hearted statements of progress in the push for substantive tort reform during the 2002 session simply because a couple of really watered-down measures survived the first major legislative deadline.

Call it whistling through the graveyard, but make no mistake. Tort reform is dead as a hammer during the 2002 legislative session at least any tort reform that's going to cause any flop-sweat among the barristers.

Never has there been a more coordinated effort in the business and professional community to bring about tort reforms designed to put a small dent in Mississippi's growing reputation as a trial lawyer's paradise. But when the deadline came, only a couple of dishwater-weak tort reform bills survived, and their fate is uncertain.

Why is tort reform consistently dead-on-arrival at the Capitol? It certainly isn't because of a lack of popular support among the voters.

It's because lawyers have out-planned, out-politicked, out-spent and out-contributed the business community in the state's political arena and have gained control of the process.

Gov. Ronnie Musgrove is a lawyer. House Speaker Tim Ford is a lawyer. Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck is educated as a lawyer.

Musgrove raised $921,776 in campaign contributions in 2001. Of that, $396,698 43 percent came from trial lawyers.

Ford and Tuck appoint legislative committee chairmen. Guess what?

Tuck appointed 21 senators to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Twelve committee members are lawyers, including the chairman and vice-chairman, and one is married to a lawyer. Ford appointed 25 representatives to the House Judiciary A Committee. Thirteen members, including the chairman and vice-chairman, are lawyers.

Let's recap:

In Musgrove, the trial lawyers have the best friend in the Governor's Mansion that hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions can buy. That covers the executive branch.

Lawyers control both legislative committees in which tort reform legislation lives or dies, and the leadership of the Legislature is comprised of attorneys. That takes care of the legislative branch.

Efforts to safeguard litigants from judicial abuses through courageous revisions of the state Canons of Judicial Ethics led by Mississippi Supreme Court Chief Justice Ed Pittman died in a withering volley of criticism from entrenched trial court judges and trial lawyers. The revisions that survived were like the tort reform bills in the Legislature weak, watered-down and essentially worthless.

The final battleground over tort reform, however, is the Mississippi Supreme Court. In the last round of judicial elections, Mississippi watched the titanic struggle between the business community and the trial lawyers in one of the muddiest campaigns in history. Trial lawyers have made no secret of their desire to put judges on the high court who are friendly to plaintiffs' attorneys.

Tort reform will only come when the citizens of Mississippi utilize the initiative and referendum process to institute the changes in the state's judicial system they deem necessary and proper.

Until then, there will continue to be a lot of talk and no action.