The Insurance Information Institute (Triple-I), an insurance industry body whose members account for nearly half of all US property and casualty premiums written, launched a consumer awareness campaign, targeting attorney advertising and third-party litigation funding in Texas and Kentucky. The campaign, called Life of a Billboard Attorney, consists of three 30-second streaming videos running ahead of those states’ 2027 legislative sessions.
The videos are an advocacy tool. The numbers behind them are not.
US tort costs reached $579.7 billion in 2023, nearly double the $299.7 billion recorded nine years earlier, according to a Triple-I analysis published in October 2026, drawing on a comparative study produced jointly with the US Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform (ILR) in June 2026. Both organizations represent the insurer and business community on tort reform, so the framing reflects their advocacy position. The underlying data, drawn from National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) statutory figures, is independent. The trend it describes is not in dispute.
Commercial property rates have been falling for more than a year, as have many specialty and financial lines. US casualty has not followed. Umbrella and excess liability remained the highest-increasing lines in the commercial market through the first half of 2026, according to WTW’s Commercial Lines Insurance Pricing Survey, while commercial auto continued to face sustained loss-cost pressure. The gap between property and casualty now tracks closely with the difference in litigation exposure between those two lines.
The two largest categories in the Triple-I/ILR tort cost study were other liability at $249.3 billion and personal auto liability at $188.1 billion, together accounting for nearly three-quarters of the national total. Those are the same categories that have kept casualty rates elevated through the broader soft market, making litigation cost the structural explanation for an otherwise counterintuitive pricing divergence.
Triple-I’s choice of Texas and Kentucky as the campaign’s launch markets is not incidental. Texas is actively moving toward litigation funding disclosure requirements. The state’s Supreme Court sought further public comment on third-party litigation funding transparency rules in September 2026, following its own advisory committee’s recommendation against rulemaking in 2025.
Kentucky has not yet acted on TPLF. Neither state is among the more than 20 that have already passed disclosure laws, according to Triple-I’s October 2026 issues brief on litigation funding reform, which puts both squarely in the unfinished-business column heading into 2027 sessions.
Third-party litigation funding, in which outside investors finance lawsuits in exchange for a share of any proceeds, is the specific practice the campaign targets. A separate Triple-I and Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS) study, published in October 2025, estimated that legal system abuse trends added between $231.6 billion and $281.2 billion to liability insurance losses over the decade to 2023.
Critics of TPLF restrictions have argued that outside funding improves access to justice for plaintiffs who could not otherwise afford litigation. That debate is what 2027 legislative sessions will be asked to resolve.
For brokers renewing casualty and umbrella accounts, the state-by-state patchwork already affects how underwriters assess exposure by jurisdiction. A client facing litigation in a state with disclosure rules is in a materially different position from one operating where litigation funding still runs without transparency requirements, and that gap in legal environment is increasingly reflected in carrier appetite and pricing by state.
“Litigation is outgrowing the economy,” said Michel Léonard, chief economist and data scientist at Triple-I. “That gap doesn’t stay in the courtroom. It lands in claims, reserves and premiums.”
