Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act of 2004

LAWSUIT ABUSE REDUCTION ACT OF 2004 -- (House of Representatives - September 14, 2004)

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 766, I call up the bill (H.R. 4571) to amend Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to improve attorney accountability, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MARKEY. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, just think for a second what is going on in the world this week.

The assault weapons ban expired yesterday, freeing the way for an assault weapons buying frenzy. The Republican Congress refuses to allow a vote on extending the ban on the sale of assault weapons.

Companies all over America continue to offshore American jobs to foreign countries with tax breaks as incentives that the Republicans refuse to take off the books.

Oil prices remain sky high, with analysts expecting them to stay sky high for the foreseeable future, but the Republicans have no plan to protect American consumers from being tipped upside down as they pay gasoline prices and home heating oil prices.

The 9/11 Commission has come back with recommendations that they insist that Congress pass to make sure there is not a repetition of 9/11. The Republican Party refuses to bring those bills out here on the floor.

Osama bin Laden is still at large, and just last week, we had a videotape from his top deputy threatening further attacks on the United States.

We have 1,000 troops who have died in Iraq. We have suffered 5,000 wounded in Iraq, and no end in sight.

North Korea may have exploded a nuclear bomb this week. South Korea is now enriching uranium and plutonium.

So what has the Republican United States Congress decided to do this week? What important issue are we debating? Will it be Iraq? Will it be terrorism? Will it be oil prices? Will it be a stagnant economy? No.

The Republicans have decided that this week, 3 weeks before we adjourn, is lawsuit abuse week, so that we can deny families in our country that have been injured by large corporations from being able to sue those corporations for the damage they did to the children, to the families. And the centerpiece is this Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act that really should be called the Legislative Abuse Expansion Act.

This bill contains unconstitutional provisions that would force every State court to implement entirely new court rules and procedures. The bill contains unfunded mandates that would force States to conduct an inquiry about what the outcome of the case will be before discovery and trial have even taken place. How is the court supposed to know that? If a case is not lucky enough to be brought before Judge Carnac, the court may have to subpoena witnesses, hold evidentiary hearings and ask the individuals involved to the litigation proceeding to spend time and money on the new "pretrial trial" mandated by this bill to block individuals from suing corporations who have hurt American families.

The simple fact is that the amount of civil litigation in this country is not expanding. The Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics and National Center for State Courts track civil cases and verdicts in the Nation's 75 largest counties. They reported in April that, in the last decade, the number of cases has gone down, not up. The bureau reported that the number of general civil cases disposed of by trial in the Nation's largest counties declined from 22,000 in 1992 to 11,000 in 2001, a 47 percent decline.

There is no urgency on this issue. There has been a 47 percent decline in these kind of cases. The plaintiffs won about half the time. And the overall median award was $37,000 in 2001, down from $65,000 in 1992.

Why are we taking these bills up when there is no litigation explosion? Why are we running roughshod over the rights of the States to set rules? Why are we restricting the flexibility of judges to protect ordinary families in our country?

There is only one reason why, because the Republican Party wants to shut down the access that every citizen currently has to our legal system to seek justice and compensation when they have been harmed by the actions of a wealthy corporation. That is what this is all about. Vote "no" on this legislation.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT