The House Commerce Committee voted without dissent Tuesday to expand existing immunity from Mardi Gras-related civil lawsuits to include float builders and\u00a0other service providers to krewes.<\/p>\n
Current law\u00a0protects krewes or other parading organizations and their members from any civil actions arising from any loss or injury suffered during a parade\u00a0except in cases of a\u00a0“wanton act or gross negligence” or in cases where\u00a0the defendant was driving\u00a0a motor vehicle during the parade. House Bill 902<\/a> by Rep. Jeff Arnold, D-Algiers, would add “any service provider” of the krewes to the list of\u00a0protected\u00a0individuals and businesses.<\/p>\n Arnold said he may amend the bill on the House floor to make it clear that a float builder could still be sued for “gross negligence,” though that standard puts a high burden of proof on a plaintiff.<\/p>\n “We just\u00a0don’t want\u00a0somebody who gets hit in the face with beads to be able to look down the list and say, ‘Oh, I’ll sue the float builder,'” Arnold said. “They really should have been included when we first passed” the\u00a0Mardi Gras immunity law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The House Commerce Committee voted without dissent Tuesday to expand existing immunity from Mardi Gras-related civil lawsuits to include float builders and\u00a0other service providers to krewes. Current law\u00a0protects krewes or other parading organizations and their members from any civil actions arising from any loss or injury suffered during a parade\u00a0except in cases of a\u00a0“wanton act […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,3,214,4,8,9,107],"tags":[381,1119,379,382,383,380,1139,378,384],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.carnivalneworleans.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1855"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.carnivalneworleans.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.carnivalneworleans.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.carnivalneworleans.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.carnivalneworleans.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1855"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/blog.carnivalneworleans.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1859,"href":"http:\/\/blog.carnivalneworleans.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1855\/revisions\/1859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.carnivalneworleans.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.carnivalneworleans.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.carnivalneworleans.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}