[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 32 (Tuesday, February 21, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H1961-H1966]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       THE AMERICAN LEGAL SYSTEM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Molinari). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 4, 1995, the gentleman from Nebraska [Mr. 
Christensen] is recognized for 46 minutes as the designee of the 
majority leader.
  Mr. CHRISTENSEN. Madam Speaker, the American legal system is in 
serious need of repair. Frivolous litigation and overzealous litigators 
are stifling entrepreneurship, damaging competitiveness of American 
products on international markets and draining the U.S. economy.
  The American people are tired of hearing about multimillion-dollar 
awards given to someone who has been injured due to their own 
negligence and then goes looking for the pot of gold at the end of the 
legal rainbow.
  Commonsense legal reform is the needle that will sew up unrestrained 
access to the deep pockets of corporate America and the shallow pockets 
of nonprofit groups like the Little League and the Girl Scouts.
  The American civil justice system needs reform and needs it now.
  Last month an article on legal reform by the Los Angeles Times stated 
that in California alone lawyers made $16.3 billion in legal fees in 
1992.
  My colleagues, $16.3 billion is more than the gross domestic product 
of nearly three dozen Third World nations.
  Madam Speaker, in the late 1970's two men illegally entered a remote 
section of the Miramar Naval Station through a breach in the fence. You 
all know Miramar as the place where ``Top Gun'' was filmed.
  Now, ignoring numerous Government property no-trespassing signs, the 
two set out on their mission to steal valuable copper cable, attached 
to power poles throughout the base. After being assured by one of the 
men that the power lines were dead, his partner in crime climbed the 
pole. As he began cutting the cable, he touched an exposed wire which 
knocked him unconscious, but he still clung to the pole. In an attempt 
to rescue his friend, the other thief began climbing the pole and also 
touched the live wire, which threw him to the ground and paralyzed him 
for life.
  Well, obviously, this case went to trial, and plaintiffs' lawyers 
pleaded their case to a sympathetic jury, and, guess what: The verdict. 
The two thieves won. The court was found to say that the United States, 
as owner of the naval base, had a duty to protect the two thieves 
because it was reasonably foreseeable that they or thieves like them 
would enter and steal the copper cable.
  Absurdity, you say? Yes, indeed. But it is the reality of the 
American civil justice system as we know it today.
  Let me tell you another story about our civil justice system in the 
1990's. There is probably not a Member today who has not enjoyed 
meeting with a visiting Girl Scout troop from their district, gathering 
excited and enthusiastic youngsters who come to the Capitol for the 
first time, and maybe the only time in their lives, to learn firsthand 
the meaning of that time-honored phrase, ``A government of the people, 
by the people, and for the people.''

                              {time}  2310

  You know how they pay for their trips here and all the other 
activities of their individual troop? They sell cookies. As a matter of 
fact, they delivered to my office today my order of Girl Scout cookies. 
But there is probably something you do not know about these legendary 
cookies. I have been told that the Girl Scouts of Illinois have to sell 
over a million cookies just to pay their liability insurance premiums. 
Why? Because they have been getting sued by overzealous plaintiff 
lawyers.
  This organization known for teaching our Nation's youth about 
teamwork, community, and the value of volunteering has been beset by 
predatory lawyers looking for anybody with pockets to pick. My fellow 
colleagues, it is time that this stop. We stand ready to pass H.R. 10, 
the common sense legal reform bill and to shore up those organizations 
that teach our children about honesty and integrity as well as the 
corporations that employ their parents.
  It is an important measure and one that we will have an opportunity 
to debate fully over the next 3 weeks.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Chatanooga, TN [Mr. 
Wamp], who sits on the Transportation and Science and Small Business 
Committees.
  Mr. WAMP. Madam Speaker, I come tonight, thanking the gentleman from 
Nebraska, slightly under the weather tonight but I wanted to take the 
opportunity to come and talk about two institutions in this country, 
Madam Speaker, that are really not in very good shape. One is this 
institution, an outstanding heritage this institution of Congress has 
had, but today we are not in favor among the voters out there still 
looking at this institution as arrogant and out of touch. But you know, 
we are doing something about that. We came on the very first day and 
passed the Accountability Act, holding us to the same laws as the 
people in this country have to live under. And we are making major 
strides in the last few weeks here in Congress, to clean up our act and 
to be honest with the American people about what goes on here and be 
good stewards of the tax dollars, once again.
  But another institution that I have to bring to the well tonight that 
is in dire need of a jump start right now in the legal institution in 
this country, where our lawyers have taken on the same kind of
 arrogance in many ways. I would argue that much like we have led the 
reforms of the last few weeks here and tried to clean up our act, the 
bar association and the attorneys in this country need to lead the way 
for tort reform.

  I encourage our attorney friends to join us on substantive and 
positive reform of this system which the American people need to count 
on.
  One of the basic tenets of our Constitution is the notion of a fair 
and speedy trial. If you are an American citizen that has been 
unfortunate enough to either be sued or have to sue somebody to pursue 
justice, you know that the concept of a fair and speedy trial is not 
easy to come by in this day and age. We have a system in this country 
of insurance law, where the attorneys actually work for an insurance 
company instead of the defendant, sometimes even instead of the 
plaintiff.
  Once they work for that insurance company, that insurance company is 
just going to keep paying them until that amount that they designated 
that they would pay for legal fees is completely drained. And through 
that deep pockets theory, everybody sues everybody until everybody's 
insurance company is working with an attorney, and they keep working 
until all the money is gone. And the case is not going to be settled 
until the money is all gone.
  We should not be about bashing lawyers. I do not want to do that. I 
do not want lawyers bashing Members of Congress. I think we need to 
uphold this institution and promote the institution and encourage our 
friends in the legal community to help us with their reform.
  Lawyers are good people. Many of my friends are attorneys. Many of 
the people who helped me come to Congress are attorneys. Even some 
trial lawyers, I think, are good folks. But for too long they have made 
all the rules in this country. And it is time for the people to run the 
show again.
   [[Page H1962]] More than a decade ago, an outstanding barrister from 
my home city of Chattanooga, Don Warner, told me that in most 
construction lawsuits everybody loses, plaintiffs, defendants, and all, 
except the attorneys. And they all win. They get paid, get paid good. 
They go home. Everybody else loses. Attorneys split up the money and 
the plaintiffs and defendants share what is left. Most of the time that 
is not hardly anything.
  You know, Madam Speaker, I believe in this country we must preserve 
the right to petition the court for justice, but we must also encourage 
and have a system of laws that encourage the settlement of our disputes 
without litigation.
  I thank the Speaker tonight, and I thank the gentleman from Nebraska 
for his leadership on this issue. I encourage all those in this body to 
support H.R. 10 as we try to clean up the legal mess in the United 
States of America.
  Mr. BRYANT of Tennessee. Madam Speaker, speaking as an attorney who 
also is a freshman Member of this 104th Congress, I wanted to just add 
to what my colleague said about all lawyers. There are some mighty good 
lawyers out there, both on the civil side, the defense side, and on the 
trial lawyer side, too. Unfortunately, like any other business or 
profession, there are a few out there that make some bad judgments, 
whether negligently or intentionally, and bring a lot of heat to bear 
on the lawyers.
  I think most of us that practiced law for a living before coming up 
here would agree with Vice President Quayle that there are some 
improvements, some reasonable changes that can be made that need to be 
made and, as the gentleman from Nebraska, Jon Christensen, has said, 
H.R. 10, which has now been divided into two different bills by our 
Committee on the Judiciary, on which I serve, is coming up actually 
tomorrow for markup in our Committee on the Judiciary.
  And both of these bills, while not perfect, are very strong 
improvements in the rules that govern our courts. They make some 
changes to some of the laws, I think, that, again, provide a fairer 
balance to our civil justice system.
  Only recently, this House passed six criminal bills. And as a former 
U.S. attorney, as a Federal prosecutor, I felt very strongly about 
those. In fact, like most of you, probably campaigned on those types of 
issues. And we talked there about swinging that pendulum in the 
criminal system back away from the rights of the criminal more to the 
middle, back toward the society and to the victims. And much as we did 
in the criminal side now, we are looking to do that in the civil side 
through a reasonable set of tort reform laws. Again, bringing that 
balance back to a more fairer standard for both sides and to society, 
because I think there are legitimate complaints there.
  I know you all campaigned the way I did, and that was one of the 
major complaints I heard. I used to laugh, and they would ask me what I 
did for a living. I would kind of mumble that I was a lawyer, at that I 
was trying to improve the status of my occupation so I was running for 
Congress. So I do not know if any of you had that same problem, but 
that certainly was there.
  Mr. CHRISTENSEN. During my campaign, even though I am a licensed 
attorney, people would always ask me what I did. And I never would tell 
them that I was a licensed attorney because that was usually a strike 
against me.
  Mr. BRYANT of Tennessee. Well, it is. I think, hopefully, as we go 
through this hour, we are going to talk in more detail about what these 
two bills do, some of the details, and how they change and, hopefully, 
as a result of what we do in Congress. I see the gentleman from Arizona 
[Mr. Hayworth] down there. And I think he has something we wants to 
say.
  But people will be pleased that we will get the type of bipartisan 
support that we are seeing in some of our other bills. We will get our 
colleagues in the other House to go along with us and have the 
President sign a bill that will vastly improve our legal system.
  Mr. CHRISTENSEN. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Tennessee 
for his comments earlier.
  I yield to my friend, the gentleman from Scottsdale, AZ [Mr. 
Hayworth], who is on the Committee on Resources, Banking, and Veterans' 
Affairs.

                              {time}  2320

  Mr. HAYWORTH. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Nebraska, and 
as I look around this Chamber and think about what has been transpiring 
in these first 50 days of the Contract With America, I would be remiss 
if I did not pause to state my very genuine admiration, not only for my 
friend, the gentleman from Nebraska, but his dynamic duo from 
Tennessee. In fact, there is a terrific trio, when we think about our 
good friend, Mr. Hilleary, also serving with this distinction in this 
Congress.
  I look here and I see my friend, the gentleman from Washington State, 
Rick White, here in the Chamber, I am also aware of the fact that there 
of us in this room are blessed with spouses from the great State of 
Mississippi, all born down there.
  It is kind of interesting here, and I look to the Chair, and there is 
the gentlewoman from New York [Ms. Molinari], and Madam Speaker, thank 
you for being here at this late hour, an hour that is still relatively 
early in my home district, but in a very real sense, for this Nation, 
Madam Speaker, the hour is growing late.
  Madam Speaker, let me start with this simple statement. The American 
people want to hold wrongdoers accountable. No one in this Chamber 
would disagree with that statement. It is a truism, and certainly, as 
my good friend, the gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Bryant], the former 
U.S. attorney in Memphis, would point out, it is the basis of our legal 
system, the notion of accountability.
  The Common Sense Legal Reform Act restores accountability to product 
laws. Manufacturers should not be hit with a massive lawsuit because 
someone deliberately misuses their product.
  We are bringing an end to the misuse of punitive damages, an 
aberration in our system that was increasingly used to give plaintiffs 
a $1 million plus windfall that they could share with their attorneys.
  However, these changes will have little meaning unless we apply them 
to the notorious cases that are still wreaking havoc within our legal 
system. It is here where the outrageous punitive damage awards are 
making a mockery of justice. Wrongdoers are not being held accountable. 
What is happening, quite sadly, in my opinion, is that some attorneys 
are milking the system for every cent they can get.
  Madam Speaker, to illustrate what I'm taking about, let us focus on 
the insurance industry for just a moment. I understand that the 
insurance industry is not going to get a lot of sympathy. I'm not out 
here searching or hoping to be a defender of the insurance industry. 
But what is happening with insurance, a service to our society in a 
real sense, and a product that our society depends on in order to 
function, should make us think twice before we pass a bill ignoring the 
problems.
  Take the insurance industry within the great State of Alabama, for 
example. The Prudential Insurance Company, a large, well-established 
company we all know, had an agent in Alabama. That agent sold an 
annuity policy to a couple. Nothing unusual there.
  But the company soon learned that their own agent had greatly 
overstated the value of this policy. The agent had deceived the couple, 
which was trying to legitimately plan for its retirement. What did 
Prudential do? Prudential did the right thing, alerting the couple 
about the agent's deception, and offering to return all the premiums 
the couple had paid.
  The company realized that the couple had been mistreated, and the 
company took steps to repair all
 the economic damage that had been done to the couple. But instead, the 
couple chose to sue the company, and like many of these civil justice 
cases, this one went to trial by jury.

  The jury awarded the couple $430,000 in compensatory damages, and 
then, then a staggering $25 million in punitive damages, $25 million, 
against a company that tried to right a wrong.
  I understand the facts of the case. An elderly couple was deceived. 
They deserved compensation, no one would argue about that. But under 
what code of right and wrong does a jury decide that $25 million is 
justice?
  This is what is going on in the great State of Alabama. I conferred 
with one 
[[Page H1963]] of our colleagues who hails from that great State. He 
confirmed it. During the first 9 months of last year, Alabama juries 
handed down 11 separate multi-million dollar punitive damage verdicts.
  Let me quote now from one of our Nation's top legal and criminal 
experts, professor George Priest of Yale University Law School. He said 
``The System is totally out of control in Alabama.''
  Now, we understand full well what will transpire. A lot of the trial 
lawyers' lobbyists will come down here and say ``This is a state issue. 
The Federal Government has no business passing a national punitive 
damages cap.'' Tell that to the people who provide services or sell 
insurance within the great State of Alabama.
  It is worth noting that the Alabama State Legislative did pass a cap, 
a $250,000 limit on punitive damages. What happened? In the wake of 
that decision by the Alabama state legislature, elected judges in that 
State struck it down. No wonder many attorneys want this left as a 
State issue.
  My point is simple, Madam Speaker. If we fail to extend the punitive 
damage provisions of H.R. 10 to all civil justice cases, then we are 
fooling ourselves that we have created a far-reaching legal reform 
within the system.
  Madam Speaker, it is simply insufficient to bring reform to one 
corner of the system while blissfully ignoring the outrages going on in 
every other aspect of civil law. How many more million dollar awards 
will have to be handed down before we realize our system is out of 
kilter with reality, and ultimately, with justice?
  We all want to see wrongdoers held accountable but it is worth noting 
that accountability means restoring a sense of proportion and 
responsibility to our entire legal system.
  I say to my colleagues, Madam Speaker, we are moving in the right 
direction, but let us not stop before we really get started. Let us 
work, toward real reform, genuine reform, that will truly touch every 
American.
  Undergirding a variety of these questions, whether they deal with our 
civil system of law, or, really, any other question that comes before 
this 104th Congress is this simple notion of the law. I believe my 
colleagues, the gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Bryant, and the gentleman 
from Nebraska, Mr. Christensen, both trained as attorneys, would 
readily admit this.
  It is this simple noting that undergirds, really, the entire legal 
system, if you will, of Western civilization. That is the question of 
what is reasonable, the test of what a reasonable persons would apply.
  I think it has been shown with stunning clarity, not only in the 
context of my remarks but, indeed, as we move now into other questions, 
as we take a look at regulatory reform, as we take a look at so much 
that has gone on with our Federal Government, we see that that sense of 
reasonableness has been, if not completely abandoned, then certainly 
neglected.
  Madam Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to join with you for a 
revolution that is not radical, but one that is reasonable. I look 
forward to working together to adopt commonsense legal reform.
  Mr. BRYANT of Tennessee. Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HAYWORTH. I am glad to yield to the gentleman from Memphis.
  Mr. BRYANT of Tennessee. I appreciate the gentleman from Arizona 
articulating his position so well.
  I want to, if we could, Madam Speaker, perhaps digress a minute and 
talk about exactly what punitive damages are. A lot of times, Madam 
Speaker, in the legal system people may not understand what drives up 
our verdicts to these ridiculously high figures, in some cases.
  Most of the time, those figures are based on punitive damages. 
Generally, under the laws of all States, as well as the Federal system 
in civil cases there are two types of damages that a jury or a judge 
can award. One type is called compensatory damages, and that simply 
means that a victim of an accident, of any type of lawsuit, is entitled 
to be fairly compensated, hence, compensatory damages.
  Generally that is the type of damages that involves an injury, 
hospital bills, the pain and suffering, the loss of income, loss of 
wages; again, things that you can value, things that you can measure, 
as a general rule.
  The law also recognizes the other type of damages, punitive damages, 
which arose as a philosophical, as a policy issue to punish, hence the 
word ``punitive damages,'' to punish the defendant, the wrongdoer, in 
the sense that you want to teach that person a lesson, teach that 
company a lesson.
  You want to deter that type of conduct, and the way society through 
the courts has recognized that has been simply to award these punitive 
damages, which really have no measure.
                              {time}  2330

  Often they are a pie in the sky. It is whatever a jury feels like 
giving that particular day under the emotion of a particular trial. As 
a former defense attorney who defended cases, I can tell you that these 
are the most difficult types of damages to measure. Again, there are 
usually no standards, no guidelines, it is just something that a jury 
is asked to do that day, in whatever mood they might be in and, of 
course, sometimes you get some rather large figures. But the punitive 
damages typically under our systems go to the victims and to the 
victims' attorneys.
  It has been suggested that perhaps if punitive damages are awarded, 
they ought to go not to the lawyer and not to the victim but to society 
or to some third party. After all, the victim is not necessarily to be 
compensated with punitive damages since they have already received 
their compensatory damages. The real purpose is not to pay the victim 
any more but to deter and to punish that wrongdoer. So that has been 
suggested.
  In our bill, which has now been redesignated as H.R. 956, we talk 
about punitive damages. This bill will apply throughout both the State 
and the Federal courts in most civil cases, and it limits, it puts a 
cap on, if you will, the amount of monetary punitive damages that can 
be awarded. It limits them to $250,000, or 3 times the compensatory 
damages given in that particular case, whichever figures is greater.
  Mr. CHRISTENSEN. Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BRYANT of Tennessee. I yield to the gentleman from Nebraska.
  Mr. CHRISTENSEN. So we are not talking in H.R. 956 about taking away 
that right, or the right to sue or the right to compensatory damages or 
even the right for punitive damages where there have been examples of 
egregious conduct on the parts of individuals or corporations. We are 
just talking about bringing some commonsense legal reform to bear here, 
three times your economic loss, is that not correct?
  Mr. BRYANT of Tennessee. That is right, Jon. It is basically 
heretofore what I have called pie in the sky. Even in criminal law 
where you actually punish directly a crime, a piece of misconduct, the 
criminal knows ahead of time or very quickly discovers when he goes to 
trial what the limitations are. There is a certain sentence, a certain 
maximum sentence they can receive. But in our civil system with 
punitive damages, the particular defendant, whether it be an individual 
or whether it be a company, has no idea other than what the plaintiff's 
attorney might sue for, which is usually a large amount because, at 
least in my State, you cannot get any more than you ask for, so they 
ask for huge sums of money. It really is not fair.
  The effect we have seen in our judicial system and in our economy is 
that when companies are hit with these large punitive damage awards, it 
acts as a chilling effect. It discourages companies from not only the 
research and development but primarily the development to new products. 
Even though they pass certain government standards, they are still in a 
lot of cases subject to potential liability. So a lot of times the 
companies had rather not go to that risk and put a new product on the 
market if they know they are going to be sued and hit with huge sums of 
money. It has the effect sometimes of stifling growth in not only the 
new types of products we might get but jobs. Companies all around the 
country have to deal with ever-increasing insurance premiums which are 
driven up in large part by again these large verdicts that the
 insurance companies have to pay out.

  It is primarily I think because of that reasoning that we want to see 
an 
[[Page H1964]] economy in America that is growing and going, we want to 
see our companies creating new jobs in the private sector and 
developing new products that we have taken this approach.
  Again, when you look at it in the scheme of why we have punitive 
damages, and, that is, again to deter companies from doing bad things, 
and most of the time that is malicious, intentional type of wrongdoing, 
to me it no longer has the place in our judicial system that it has had 
in the past. I think reasonable caps which would be fair to both sides, 
again a reasonable balance in this, is exactly what we need.
  Mr. CHRISTENSEN. At this time, I would like to yield to may colleague 
the gentleman from Seattle, WA [Mr. White], an attorney.
  Mr. WHITE. I thank my friend from Nebraska for yielding, I thank the 
Speaker, and I thank all the other Members of the House who were kind 
enough to stay here tonight and listen to my humble remarks.
  I would like to confess something tonight that really is not too 
popular these days. That is, ever since I was in grade school, I have 
wanted to be a lawyer. I finished grade school, high school and 
college, went on to law school and for the last 15 years or so, I have 
been a practicing lawyer in the Seattle area and I have enjoyed my 
practice a great deal. As a lawyer, I have great respect for the law. 
But I have also discovered something during these 15 years of law 
practice that I think is very important for us to consider today. That 
is, the fact that our legal system is badly out of balance and badly 
needs to be fixed.
  Let me just give a couple of examples. Madam Speaker, if you go to 
Seattle today, you will find some people working in high-rise office 
buildings with computers that are tied into the financial markets. 
Every time a stock goes up or down, these computers register what is 
happening in the marketplace. You think that is not surprising, because 
there are stockbrokers in every large city. But the fact is, Madam 
Speaker, many of these people are not stockbrokers. These people are 
attorneys and they have their computers programmed so that when a stock 
falls by a certain amount, immediately a complaint can be filed 
alleging a securities violation.
  There is a company in my district who had its stock drop because of 
an erroneous report about 9 a.m. one morning last year. By 1 p.m. that 
very afternoon, two 60-page complaints had been filed in the Federal 
District Court in Seattle. It turns out the announcement was wrong, the 
complaints later were quietly withdrawn. But the fact is these lawsuits 
are driven not by the merits of the case but by lawyers out to make a 
buck.
  There are other examples. We have all heard the story of the woman in 
Arizona who spilled coffee on herself and received a judgment of some 
$2 million because the restaurant made the coffee too hot.
  In the crime area, another example from my own district. A man named 
Charles Campbell, in 1982, slit the throat of an 8-year-old girl, slit 
the throat of her mother, slit the throat of the next-door neighbor who 
just happened to be there at the time. Under very painstaking, 
elaborate procedures, he was sentenced to death by a Snohomish County 
jury. Yet for the following 12 years, he evaded his sentence in 3 
separate Federal appeals, raising a different issue each time, none of 
which had any merit. These are problems, my colleagues, that have to be 
fixed.
  I am proud to say that we are starting to make
   some progress fixing these problems. We have already marked up in 
one of my committees the securities litigation reform bill. We have 
passed in this House the crime bill which will solve some of the 
criminal law problems. This next week we will be seeing some more 
legislation designed to reform the legal system.

  I have been happy to support, as my friend from Nebraska has and 
others have, even more far-reaching reforms in the legal system. So I 
think we are making progress.
  But as I stand here today, I think back, more than a year ago, 
probably about a year and a half ago. When I sat down with my wife in 
our home in Bainbridge Island, Washington, and I explained to her that 
I was thinking about leaving my law practice and running for Congress. 
She asked me what I think was a very revealing question. She said, 
``Why in the world do you want to go from the second most hated 
profession in the world to the most hated profession in the world?''
  I think that is a good question, but I think today we are starting to 
see the answer. Because if we pass these reforms that we are talking 
about today, I think we can restore some honor to both professions, to 
our profession in Congress, and to the profession of the law.
  I urge every single one of my colleagues, those that are here and 
those that are not here tonight, to give careful consideration to each 
of these legal reform bills as they come before the House and to vote 
for them to strike a blow for improving our legal system.
  Mr. CHRISTENSEN. Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. WHITE. I yield to the gentleman from Nebraska.
  Mr. CHRISTENSEN. The case you brought up earlier about the spilled 
coffee, and this is a perfect example of how out of control our system 
is. The hundreds of thousands of dollars and possibly even millions of 
dollars to try to send a message to the corporation that made that 
coffee too hot is just an example.
  Under our H.R. 956, what we are going to do is bring some reform into 
that area, to try to bring some common sense into that area. We are not 
going to take the right away from that individual to bring that 
lawsuit, but for a spilled coffee, maybe her car was hurt a little bit, 
maybe she was burned to a significant amount, but to have a multi-
thousand-dollar, and I do not even know what the final judgment was. 
Does anyone know what the final amount was at this time?
  Mr. BRYANT of Tennessee. As I recall it was over $3 million awarded. 
It may have been reduced somewhat by a judge, but it was still a 
million-dollar judgment.
  Mr. CHRISTENSEN. A million-dollar judgment for a spilled coffee 
because it was too hot and burned someone. That is an example of how 
out of control our system is. That is why the American people are 
crying out and saying, ``You have got to do something. You have got to 
address this problem.''
                              {time}  2340

  I appreciate my colleague from Seattle, because one of the things you 
have been involved in for so many years up there with a lot of software 
development companies and you have seen firsthand some of the abuses 
that have gone on.
  Mr. WHITE. If the gentleman will yield, my district is home to some 
of the most innovative new companies in the United States. Microsoft is 
in our district, McCall Cellular, many other small companies, and these 
are the companies that are subject in particular to the kind of 
securities lawsuits that are brought not by honest plaintiffs trying to 
recover damages, but by law firms. And I might point out to my 
colleague who did not have the experience of being in our committee 
hearings in the Committee on Commerce in the last few weeks, we have 
heard a lot of talk primarily from the other side of the aisle about 
the innocent plaintiffs and how they had to be taken care of, our 
colleagues using many colorful metaphors used by our colleagues 
referring to the people as Widow Murphy and Widow Goodbody or things of 
that nature. I would like to bring up another metaphor because these 
bills are not aimed at a plaintiff who has a legitimate cause, but are 
aimed at law firms that abuse the profession. But instead of talking 
about Widow Goodbody or Widow Murphy, we should be talking about do we 
cheat them, how the plaintiffs' law firms abuse the system in hopes of 
retaining a large fee and really not having much to do with the 
benefits to the paintiff.
  Mr. CHRISTENSEN. Madam Speaker, I yield to my friend and colleague 
from Georgia [Mr. Barr], the former U.S. attorney.
  Mr. BARR. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Madam Speaker, there is a case I read about recently, called Jarndyce 
versus Jarndyce, and the case of Jarndyce versus Jarndyce was written 
about in a book and was set forth as an example of a case, a lawsuit, 
civil lawsuit which droned on and on and on and 
[[Page H1965]] on, for years, as a matter of fact. And the author 
described how this lawsuit had generations of lawyers born into it and 
who died out of it. And every member of this particular bar sooner or 
later became involved in the case of Jarndyce versus Jarndyce.
  That case was written about by one Charles Dickens well over 100 
years ago, and it epitomized at that time as it would today the 
problems with our legal system.
  It cannot be the purview and it is not our aim in this 104th Congress 
to reform everything that is wrong with our legal system. I daresay if 
that were a goal we might not have enough time in the 104th Congress. 
But more importantly, it is not the role of the Federal Government to 
completely restructure the minutia of our legal system.
  It is important, for example, to realize that our legal system is one 
of the tremendous strengths of our society. The access that we have, 
that our citizens have to our court system is something that all of us 
in this body, all of us as attorneys, all of us as citizens of this 
land know is very special and is indeed one of the strengths of 
America. And it is not our desire nor our goal nor would we stand by 
and see that system of justice, based as it is on documents as 
magnificent as the Magna Carta, on documents as magnificent as our 
Declaration of Independence and our own Constitution, with its 
amendments, but all of us have a role, all of us have a stake in the 
credibility of that system, for that system of justice. If it lacks 
support of the public, if it has no credibility with the public, then 
we all do indeed suffer.
  That is why we in this 104th Congress have undertaken as a very 
special charge, a charge given to us both explicitly and implicitly by 
the voters of this country on November 8 to take a look at that system, 
to do what we can to make sure that it runs more efficiently, that the 
system is not clogged with frivolous lawsuits, that cases that truly 
have merit not only find their way into the courts, but are heard on a 
timely basis by our judges and by our juries.
  It is important for us, to the greatest extent possible to streamline 
that system, and to ensure that the problems that have been written 
about for ages, such as those written about by Charles Dickens in 
Jarndyce versus Jarndyce, which although a fictional case both back in 
his day as well as our day could very well be a case taken directly 
from almost any superior court or almost any U.S. district court across 
this land.
  What we are about in the 104th Congress and what we have been doing 
and will be doing in the Committee on the Judiciary, recently, and this 
week, is to take a look at at least some aspects of our civil judicial 
system to determine how can it be made better, so that cases are heard 
on a timely basis, so that cases that truly do have merit are heard and 
are adjudicated on a timely basis. But also to do what we can to weed 
out those cases that do not have the merit that brings credibility to 
our judicial system.
  Some claim that this is not within the purview of the 104th Congress 
or any Congress, and I say to them that flies in the face of our whole 
system of laws as embodied in our laws, our Constitution, and our rules 
of procedure and our courts. Clearly there is a role for the Federal 
Government, for Federal laws to address problems in that legal system 
as they affect all of our citizens across State boundaries, as so many 
of our lawsuits necessarily do.
  We do not seek and I would not stand here before you, my colleagues, 
and say we should be in the business of cutting off access to our legal 
system by citizens who truly have claims that need to be heard, rights 
or wrongs that need to be made right.
  But there are problems, and those problems do need to be addressed 
and that is why legal reform, rational legal reform, reasonable legal 
reform, commonsense legal reform, was an important part in the November 
8 elections, an explicit part of those elections, and is
 an important and an explicit and a well-supported and well-documented 
part of the Contract With America.

  I yield to my distinguished colleague from Tennessee.
  Mr. BRYANT of Tennessee. Also as a former U.S. attorney and comember 
of the Committee on the Judiciary I wanted to sort of turn this around 
a little bit and ask you a question that my good friend from Washington 
raised, sort of out of the context of what we are talking about 
tonight, but I think it deserves a further explanation in terms of his 
talking about a particular set of murders that occurred in Washington 
State and of the endless death row appeals.
  As a part of our Contract With America, and I have already referred 
to it earlier that we had dealt with some criminal issues, and I would 
like the gentleman to use his expertise and perhaps explain how we have 
addressed that situation of these habeas corpus petitions that again 
have the effect of delaying endlessly death row inmate cases.
  Mr. BARR. We could probably look through the annals of any of the 
appellate books in any of the 50 States or the District of Columbia, 
certainly; it would not take long to find death penalty cases, not just 
death penalty cases where we have inmates and defendants who have 
abused our very cherished habeas corpus system to string out beyond any 
rational basis, beyond any stretch of the imagination to really tackle 
the legitimate legal issues involved with a conviction, to the extent 
that it is not uncommon at all to see 5-, 10-, 12-, 15-, 18-year delays 
in the time between either the commission of a crime or indeed the 
imposition of a death sentence and the carrying out of that sentence. 
That detracts tremendously from the credibility of our criminal justice 
system.
  This is not a new phenomena, this has been going on for years and 
years and years, yet previous Congresses, as my distinguished colleague 
from Tennessee full well knows, failed to come to grips, did not have 
the guts to come to grips with this problem. Whether it was pressure 
from the ACLU, whether it was fear of prisoner lawsuits or whatever, 
the problem simply was not addressed by these past Congresses, despite 
our colleagues on the Republican side raising it over and over again as 
something that was not only very timely but essential to maintain the 
credibility or restore the credibility of our criminal system.
  So what we have done already as part of the legal reforms, as part of 
the Contract With America, is to address square on, head first, eye to 
eye, the problem of habeas corpus reform particularly, but not only as 
it relates to death penalty cases.

                              {time}  2350

  We have set very finite limits within which habeas corpus which, as 
my colleagues know, are indirect attacks on criminal sentences such as 
the death sentence, we have set very strict limitations on the number 
of petitions that can be filed and the time limits within which those 
petitions can be filed. But I think it is also important for the 
American public to know that we have not cut off in any way, shape, or 
form legitimate avenues of appeal to raise legitimate issues on a 
timely basis that go to the heart of a case.
  We have simply said those matters must be raised in a timely fashion. 
They must have true merit. And if they do, they will be heard. But if 
they do not, they will not be heard. And I think this will assist 
greatly to restore the credibility in our criminal justice system that 
really reflects on the entire judicial system that is so sorely lacking 
these days.
  Mr. BRYANT of Tennessee. I think, as our colleague, the gentleman 
from Nebraska, John Christensen, has been talking about all night, in 
that area, we have restored credibility, common sense, as we are 
attempting to do, as we are beginning to attempt to do in this area of 
civil justice and tort reform. And it is kind of the whole concept I 
think that we as freshmen brought up here. And one of the most 
enjoyable things, I guess, that offsets these long hours we work, it is 
almost midnight here in Washington, is the fact that we are able to do 
and in fact our leadership is allowing us to do what we said we would 
do. We are meeting our obligations. We are fulfilling our promises 
under the Contract With America and that is exciting.
  Mr. CHRISTENSEN. And I believe it is refreshing and exciting for the 
American people to have two former U.S. attorneys involved in the legal 
reform fight to bring common sense back to America and to have you a 
part of not just the criminal reform but also of this civil tort 
reform. That is what I 
[[Page H1966]] think the American people can relish, is that Members 
from our own body are going to try to bring some common sense back to 
our own, to our own brethren, to try to realign where we have gotten 
off stray. It is exciting to be part of this and what I hope to see 
would be a grassroots swell of support from the people in Nebraska and 
Omaha, in Memphis, TN, and in Georgia to see it happening from the 
grassroots up. So I am privileged to be part of this.
  I thank my colleagues for their colloquy tonight.
  Madam Speaker, I have a few comments before we close this evening. I 
thank you for your indulgence through this evening. In a few weeks we 
will be taking on this fight, this fight to expand our tort reform to 
take a look at all civil areas and so that we can expand in to take 
tort reform not just to product liability but to all areas of civil 
torts. One of the things that I am most encouraged about is that there 
is over 75 signatures on a sheet that we circulated today, just 1 day 
of circulation, that there is a lot of support in grassroots America 
and in the House of Representatives for what we are talking about.
  And if there was ever a time to bring some common sense to legal 
reform, it is now.
  Mr. HEINEMAN. Mr. Speaker, meaningful tort reform is of great 
importance to all Americans--not just big business as the trial lawyers 
would have you believe. By limiting runaway punitive damage awards, we 
have the opporutnity to help local groups such as Little League and the 
Boy Scouts, city and town government, enterpreneurs, small businesses, 
doctors, and other providers of services.
  The great majority of States have no standards or guidelines that 
juries or the courts can use to determine the maximum possible award in 
a case. As a result, the frequency, and more importantly, the size of 
punitive damage awards have increased markedly in the past years.
  A Rand Corp. study found that in Cook County IL, there was a 2000 
percent increase in punitive damage awards over a 20-year period. 
Perhaps even more startling was the size of the awards. Over that same 
period, the average punitive damage award increased from $7,000 to 
$729,000.
  Dr. Peter Huber of the Manhattan Institute estimates that our tort 
liability system, in effect, imposes a direct tax upon us all to the 
tune of $80 billion a year.
  However, the primary impact is not in the courtroom, but at the 
settlement table, where more and more defendants settle out of court to 
bypass arbitrary awards.
  Punitive damage awards are not only unfair to corporate defendants, 
they hurt the consumers of products and services. A recent study of the 
economic impact of punitive damages in Texas found that huge punitive 
damage awards penalize everyone across the board as costs are shifted 
to the consumer in the form of higher prices and fewer innovative goods 
being produced. Without innovation we cannot compete in the global 
marketplace.
  However, punitive damage reform limited to product liability cases 
addresses only a small part of the current abuses in litigation. There 
is a compelling need for a Federal standard for all cases in which 
punitive damages are sought.
  In last week's Wall Street Journal, Creighton Hale, the CEO of Little 
League Baseball, chronicled how frivolous litigation seriously 
threatens Little League. The astronomical cost of litigation and the 
fear of being sued scares away volunteer coaches, umpires, and even the 
kids.
  Little League has seen its liability insurance skyrocket 1000 
percent--from $75 per league to $795. So, instead of buying protective 
equipment to enable more children to bat, throw, run and catch, Little 
League subsidizes those who take advantage of the current system.
  Unbearable litigation, insurance costs, and fear of being sued 
unnecessarily is a common problem to all nonprofits. That is why 
expansion of the substantive reforms contained in the Commonsense Legal 
Reform Act will provide the predictability and proportionality in all 
civil tort cases.
  My 38 years in law enforcement taught me that those accused of a 
crime have the constitutional protection to have notice of the charges 
and what punishment they face. Similarly, we should afford businesses, 
municipalities, and charitable organizations the same protection.
  I certainly don't seek to avoid just compensation for those who have 
suffered legitimate losses as the result of neglect, misconduct, or 
indifference. Injured parties should be promptly and fairly 
compensated. The Commonsense Legal Reform Act allows equitable awards 
and in no way proscribes compensatory damages in any tort action.
  Nor am I attempting to eliminate punitive damages. But fairness 
requires that damages bear a reasonable relationship to the person's 
actual injury. Unfortunately, in today's litigious society that simply 
is not the case.
  Passage of the Commonsense Legal Reform Act is a vital step forward 
to provide equity throughout our civil justice system for all 
Americans. Let's reign in those who are abusing the system and are 
shutting down small businesses, the YMCA, the United Way, the Boy 
Scouts and Little League.


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