Trial lawyers, who say they were demonized during 12 years of Republican congressional rule, are seeking vindication with the Democrats’ return to power.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys, who are among the biggest contributors to Democratic candidates, have renamed their chief lobbying group the American Association for Justice and are prepared to flex their rejuvenated political muscle. Their plans include pushing tougher enforcement of workplace-safety rules and enhanced patients’ rights.

They say the shift in power also signals an end to the socalled tort reform backed by President Bush, which was aimed at limiting awards in personal-injury lawsuits against doctors and American corporations.

“The Republicans had a hell of a chance for the last couple of years and really didn’t get that far,” a trial attorney at the Coale Cooley firm in Washington, John Coale, said. “And now it’s over.”

The trial lawyers association said its political action committee contributed more than $2.5 million to 296 federal candidates for the 2006 elections, and individual members gave more than $20 million to Senate candidates. About 95% of the PAC money went to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based research group.

Businesses are girding for a fight in Congress over workplace safety and such other issues as making it a federal crime for chief executive officers and other company officials to knowingly introduce defective products that kill or severely injure consumers.

Trial lawyers “are going to be very aggressive, and I do believe they are going to make the attempt to get some payback,” the vice president for legal reform policy at the Washington-based U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Matthew Webb, said in an interview.

Mr. Bush’s major victory in limiting lawsuits was 2005 legislation requiring the biggest class-action suits to be filed in federal court rather than state courts, which have been more sympathetic to plaintiffs.

The Republican-controlled Congress failed to pass proposals to place caps on medical-malpractice awards and to create a $140 billion fund for asbestos-exposure victims.

The Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest business lobby, says it hasn’t give up on those initiatives. It also is focusing on state legislative efforts to limit liability in lawsuits.

The day after the November 7 elections, when Democrats won both houses of Congress for the first time since 1992, the chamber released a poll reporting that more than eight out of 10 voters regarded “frivolous lawsuits” as a serious problem and favored lawsuit “reform.”

Even so, the chamber and another business group, the Washington-based American Tort Reform Association, say they aren’t optimistic Congress will act.

Trial lawyers “poured millions of dollars into the campaigns for the folks who are now in power, and because of that they’re going to have leverage that they haven’t had in the past 20 years,” a partner at the Shook, Hardy & Bacon law firm in Washington and general counsel of the tort-reform group, Victor Schwartz, said.

The chief lobbyist for the triallawyers group in Washington, Linda Lipsen, said in an interview that she is polling her 60,000 members to decide on specific legislative goals. The group is still called the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, with the name change to become official next week.

“We realized that we needed to have an emphasis on what was under attack, and that would be justice,” a former president of the group and attorney at Janet, Jenner & Suggs in Columbia, S.C., Kenneth Suggs, said.

Ms. Lipsen said trial lawyers would like to see Congress strip the insurance industry of its exemption from antitrust laws, a move that would pave the way for suits against insurers. She also suggested there might be congressional hearings one day on “why there are 98,000 deaths a year” in the medical industry.

Trial attorneys will “alert the Congress to areas where they can encourage safety,” including “cars, airplanes, the environment, clean air and water, medical procedures, hospitals,” Ms. Lipsen said. “Our job is to make sure these industries are accountable.”