The fight over litigation finance is expanding on Capitol Hill, with Consumers’ Research (CR) launching its latest campaign, obtained exclusively by the Washington Reporter, against what it calls the “wokest insurance company.” The Reporter will be running a series of articles on the campaign as well as the prospects of litigation finance reform passing Congress or being implemented by executive action this year.
Consumers Research’s latest move includes placing fliers around the Hill with a mock newspaper, called The Daily Chubb, which targets the insurance giant Chubb over policies that Consumers Research calls “woke”.
“These fliers are legitimately everywhere,” a Capitol Hill veteran told the Reporter, “especially outside the Pelosi Caucus Room.”
Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) pushed for legislation last year, called the Tackling Predatory Litigation Funding Act, that would “impose a new tax on profits earned by third-party entities that finance civil litigation and curb predatory practices in the litigation funding industry,” Tillis said at the time. Rep. Kevin Hern (R., Okla.) introduced the House counterpart of the bill.
“Consumers’ Research has been sounding the alarm about Chubb’s woke ways, and now we’re taking that message straight to Capitol Hill so lawmakers can see this company’s priorities up close,” the organization’s executive director, Will Hild, told the Reporter. “Chubb isn’t just another insurance company. Under CEO Evan Greenberg, the organization has turned its market power into a political weapon to push woke policies ahead of its consumers.”
Both CR — which has already spent over $1 million in previous campaigns targeting Chubb — and its opponents view Chubb as a critical proxy in the fight over litigation finance. For years, Greenberg has advocated against litigation finance, arguing that “outside money has turned injury action into an investment scheme that treats individual misfortunes like penny stocks or subprime mortgage investments.”
But Hild told the Reporter that it is “no coincidence that Chubb is also at the tip of the spear in the fight to eliminate litigation finance, which is one of the few tools that lets everyday Americans and small businesses stand up to woke corporate giants.”
“By attacking litigation finance,” Hild continued, “Chubb is openly siding with entrenched corporate power over consumer protection and working to rig the legal system in its own favor. At the same time, Greenberg has cultivated cozy relationships with Communist China, publicly arguing for a softer line on Beijing while Chubb has invested billions linked to the Chinese market and treated Xi Jinping as a partner rather than an adversary.”
While CR’s campaign, which was complemented by a mobile billboard that circled Capitol Hill, claims that “the best mornings start with The Daily Chubb,” Chubb itself disagrees — and responded to previous CR campaigns with a microsite of its own, called “Chubb Facts.” One of its main points, which the Trump administration is likely to appreciate, is that “we insure President Trump’s legal cases,” which the company did at a time when others in its industry would not.
Chubb, which called CR’s efforts “a smokescreen designed to silence support for reforms that would bring accountability to an industry generating billions for hedge funds and trial lawyers,” rejects the organization’s criticisms, and has a powerful ally of its own in former Trump National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien, who defended the company and its CEO.
“I’ve worked with Evan Greenberg for several years now on American relations with China,” O’Brien said. “In my dealings with Evan, he has been a proponent of U.S. interests in the region. Through its operations in China, his company has contributed to shrinking the U.S. trade deficit.”
