Committee adopts consumer-protection amendment and advances bill on prepaid legal plans
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Summary
The committee adopted Amendment 2 to HB 211, adding disclosure requirements and bringing prepaid legal-plan vendors under consumer-protection enforcement; the committee then reported HB 211 out of committee as amended with individual recommendations and an attached fiscal note.
Keenan Miller, staff to Representative Jimmy, told the House Judiciary Committee that HB 211 would make prepaid legal plans easier to access by removing insurance-sale requirements and exempting them from regulation as an insurance product.
Dylan Hitchcock Lopez, committee aide, presented Amendment 2, which creates minimum disclosure requirements for prepaid legal plans, sets standards of information that plan providers must give consumers, and makes failure to disclose an unfair trade practice enforceable by the attorney general’s consumer protection unit. Lopez said the amendment aims to ensure adequate consumer protections while preserving market access.
With no sustained objection, the committee adopted Amendment 2 and, by voice, moved HB 211 (work order 34-LS0848A) from the House Judiciary Committee as amended with individual recommendations and the attached fiscal note. Chair Grachea authorized legislative legal services to make technical and conforming changes.
The motion to report HB 211 was made on the record and there was no recorded roll-call vote; the chair indicated paperwork would be signed during an at-ease.
Next steps: HB 211 was forwarded from committee as amended; the record shows adoption of Amendment 2 and committee reporting with attached fiscal note.