[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 43 (Wednesday, March 8, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H2873-H2888]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            COMMON SENSE LEGAL STANDARDS REFORM ACT OF 1995

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 108 and rule 
XXIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of the Whole House 
on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill, H.R. 956.
                              {time}  2029


                     in the committee of the whole

  Accordingly the House resolved itself into the Committee of the Whole 
House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill, H.R. 
956, to establish legal standards and procedures for product liability 
litigation, and for other purposes, with Mr. Dreier in the chair.
  The Clerk read the title of the bill.
  The CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to the rule, the bill is considered as having 
been read the first time.
  Under the rule, the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde] will be 
recognized for 30 minutes, the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Conyers] 
will be recognized for 30 minutes, the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. 
Bliley] will be recognized for 30 minutes, and the gentleman from 
Michigan [Mr. Dingell] will be recognized for 30 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde].

                              {time}  2030

  Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  (Mr. HYDE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the Common Sense 
Legal Standards Reform Act of 1995.
  Mr. Chairman, this is an historic debate. After more than a decade of 
work by Members on both sides of the aisle, product liability and legal 
reform legislation is finally being considered on the floor of the 
House for the first time. For too many years discussion and debate was 
blocked by Members who are unsympathetic to the goals of this 
legislation.
  Mr. Chairman, this legislation is directed at some basic fundamental 
problems with our civil justice system. It is intended to address the 
serious problems of lawsuit abuse. Lawsuit abuse saps our economy, 
eliminates jobs, pits neighbor against neighbor, injures our country's 
global competitiveness. In the words of former Attorney General William 
Barr, ``Our civil justice system is slow, expensive, uncertain, and 
capricious.''
  Mr. Chairman, lawsuit abuse is harming American industry and American 
workers. The uncertainty and unfairness of the present system 
discourages employers from investing capital, making better and more 
innovative products, and creating new jobs.
  Lawsuit abuse undermines our international competitiveness. Our 
companies pay liability insurance costs which are 20 to 50 times higher 
than foreign competitors. Those higher costs translate into higher 
prices for U.S. products, which in turn reduce our exports and job 
opportunities, they otherwise would provide.
  Lawsuit abuse slows research efforts to find cures for many serious 
diseases. According to Science magazine, many of America's leading 
medical research and pharmaceutical companies have decided to abandon, 
or to avoid altogether, products that would be extremely helpful to 
America's health system. Numerous other life-saving medical products 
are not reaching the market because of liability concerns.
  Lawsuit abuse means higher prices for consumers. Higher liability 
costs necessitated by the current legal atmosphere, and the lack of 
clear national standards, are ultimately passed on to consumers in the 
form of higher prices for products and services. Our legal system acts 
like a hidden tax, a ``litigation tax'' on the American consumer and 
too little goes to the injured victims.
  The U.S. Department of Commerce has estimated only 40 cents from each 
dollar expended in product liability suits ultimately reaches injured 
victims. The tort system is too costly. The current system imposes a 
staggering cost on the United States. The annual cost of this tort 
system is estimated at $117 billion. It is the most costly system in 
the world.
  Mr. Chairman, no single State can effectively resolve these problems. 
Frequently, a product is manufactured in one State, and sold in another 
State, while the alleged injury occurs in a third State. On average, 
over 70 percent of the goods manufactured in one State are shipped out 
of the State and sold elsewhere. So, the fundamental interstate 
character of this area of the law gets a uniform national solution.
  Mr. Chairman, excessive, inflative punitive damage awards have 
effects far beyond the borders of one State. They affect the investment 
decisions of large and small businesses. They hamper job creation, and 
they discourage new products from going on the market. They affect the 
present and the future of virtually every American. In an increasingly 
global economy our confusing, crazy-quilt, patchwork of 50 separate 
State liability laws presents roadblocks to America's economic growth 
and job creation.s
  Opponents say we should not preempt State law. Opponents of this 
legislation ironically talk of interference with states rights, but 
many of these same persons are quite comfortable preempting State law, 
and allowing expansive Federal regulation, in numerous other areas with 
the EPA, FDA, OSHA, Consumer Product Safety Commission, Equal 
Employment Opportunity Commission, NLRB, FTC, FERC, FCC, Securities and 
Exchange Commission, CFTC; and, who knows how many other Federal 
agencies regulating virtually every segment of the American economy?
  It is ironic that the multibillion-dollar litigation industry should 
be one aspect of the economy, but they believe the Federal Government 
should not touch. The truth is that they are for the status quo.
  This bill will not result in any new Federal spending, no new Federal 
department or agency will be created, no new Federal program will be 
established, no new Federal regulations will be issued, no new Federal 
court jurisdiction is created, and no new costs to the Federal 
taxpayer. Instead, what we will have are constant, and consistent, 
legal standards governing civil actions brought in both Federal and 
State courts. Instead of the uneven patchwork of 50-plus, confused, and 
inconsistent State laws, there will be basic uniform rules and legal 
standards that everyone will understand.


                        punitive damages reform

  Importantly, in the area of punitive damages, this bill goes beyond 
product liability suits and extends punitive damage reform to all civil 
actions.


                        several liability reform

  We will hear more about this as we go along, but we have adopted the 
California rule, which is working very well out there.


                        product seller fairness

  We distinguish between a seller and a manufacturer, something that 
should have been done a long time ago; and, very importantly, we 
initiate a statue of repose, a uniform statute of 15 years on all 
goods. A statute of repose specifies the period of time after 
manufacture of a product during which a lawsuit relating to a product 
may be brought. Thus, manufacturers cannot be sued for products 15 
years after their delivery. This is an important concept already 
recognized in Federal law because last year we passed the General 
Aviation Revitalization Act of 1994.
                        alcohol and drug defense

  This bill includes language that would prevent a claimant from 
recovering in a product liability action if that person was more than 
50 percent 
[[Page H2874]] responsible for the harm because of the use of alcohol 
or drugs.
  Mr. Chairman, the American people overwhelmingly support reforms in 
our current legal system. Why is that? Well, when the Girl Scouts of 
America have to trudge door to door in our neighborhoods to sell tens 
of thousands of boxes of cookies just to raise the funds necessary to 
protect themselves from liability, the American people know that 
something is seriously wrong with our legal system. When Americans see 
breakthrough work on medical devices and medical vaccines that could 
save lives halted because of the fear of lawsuits, the public is 
rightfully outraged. In a society where lawyers, not the injured 
victims, receive over half of every dollar spent on product liability 
litigation, it is time for change. Under our current system consumers 
lose, workers lose and businesses lose.
  Mr. Chairman, as part of the Contract With America the Republican 
Party made a commitment to end lawsuit abuse in America and return 
fairness and common sense to our legal system. Mr. Chairman, H.R. 956 
is at the core of this pledge and deserves the support of every Member 
of this body.
  Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
  The CHAIRMAN. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. 
Conyers] for 30 minutes.
  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 4 minutes.
  (Mr. CONYERS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. CONYERS. My colleagues, we have reached the moment in the frantic 
104th Congress where we will begin consideration of product liability 
reform, the conceded centerpiece of the new majority's contract with 
corporate America. But we should carefully study the signatories to 
this contract provision: the party of the first part, the Republican 
Party; the party of the second part, corporate America.
  But where are the American people?
  They are nowhere to be found.
  So, Mr. Chairman, let us be clear at the outset of this debate. What 
masquerades under the arcane title of product liability reform is 
nothing less than a frontal assault on consumers, on the courthouses 
and the juries of the 50 States, and on the continued safety of 
products found in our grocery stores, at our schools, and, yes, at our 
very homes.
  Not to be allowed to be considered is joint and several liability 
which has now been severely reduced.
  Not to be considered are various amendments on punitive damages, to 
raise the limit at least to a million dollars and to include 
noneconomic damages.
  Not to be considered is the Federal preemption of State laws that 
include sexual abuse violations, drug violations and even, yes, regular 
assaults on individual to individual.
  There is no way to change the law under this very strictured debate. 
I say to my colleagues, ``Prepare yourselves for a journey into a 
dream-like world where proponents of this legislation are unable or 
unwilling to distinguish myth from reality for the myths have grown way 
out of control.''
  Mr. Chairman, this bill is all about the rights of States, and I do 
not stand as a States righter, but for over 200 years each State 
developed its own law; my colleagues know that. We have developed tort 
law at the State level by citizens, by their courts, by their 
legislatures, and they have done a great job. The laws kept apace of 
striking the proper balance between citizens rights and business 
interests. In the past decade alone over 45 States have modified their 
tort laws in various ways where they needed correction, but this bill 
is a move to federalize all State tort law so that corporate lobbyists 
can get from the Federal Government what they could not get from the 
States.
  The pressure by corporations to do this in the first 100 days of this 
Congress has been enormous. It had to be to make the Republican 
majority turn its back and swim upstream from the central theme of the 
Contract With America which is, obviously, returning power to the 
States and to the people. I ask, ``Remember that theme that we had only 
a few weeks ago? Remember it?'' Well, it is history now, at least for 
the next few days.
  In this bill the new majority is saying. ``Welcome back to the world 
of the Great Society where the Federal Government will tell you how to 
run your courts, your juries, your business and your home.''
  Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
  The CHAIRMAN. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. 
Bliley] for 30 minutes.
  Mr. BLILEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  (Mr. BLILEY asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks).
  Mr. BLILEY. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of H.R. 956, the 
Common Sense Product Liability and Legal Reform Act. While many 
amendments will be offered to this bill from both sides of the aisle, I 
am confident that H.R. 956 represents the best compromise possible from 
the communities of jurisdiction.
  The bill before the House today is the culmination of almost two 
decades of grappling with the issue of tort reform system under 
control, particularly in the area of products liability. I am 
especially proud to have the opportunity to bring this bill to the 
floor as chairman of the Commerce Committee.
  While I am not a lawyer and do not profess to comprehend all of the 
finer points of legal discourse, I do know that today's tort system has 
grown into something that no one ever intended.
  Today, people seem to talk to their lawyers more than they talk to 
one another. For every problem, the answer seems to be another lawsuit. 
It used to be that when you drank a case of beer and fell of a ladder, 
you were drunk and stupid. Now you sue the ladder company because the 
ladder was somehow defective. The only people who have profited from 
this change in attitude are the lawyers. Americans everywhere want this 
profiteering to stop.
  That is why product liability is such a bipartisan issue. In the 
Commerce Committee, where my predecessor and good friend, the gentleman 
from Michigan, has historically championed the cause of meaningful 
product liability reform, we have held well over a dozen hearings and 
nearly 20 days of markup on product liability reform legislation. We 
reported out product liability reform legislation not just once, but 
twice, with significant bipartisan majorities. H.R. 956 is the ultimate 
product of those efforts, and there is a lot for Members on both sides 
of the aisle to support.
  This bill injects some rationally into how punitive damages are 
awarded. It lifts the burden placed on interstate commerce by 51 
separate jurisdictions. And it gives manufactures a small degree of 
predictability about what they face when they put their product on a 
truck bound for this marketplace we call America. However, there is 
nothing in this bill which impairs the ability to legitimately injured 
people to collect damages from the people or companies who injured 
them. That is what the tort system was designed to do and no one wants 
to take that away.
  There will be a great many amendments offered to this legislation 
over the next several days. Some of these amendments will improve the 
bill while others are designed to gut it. I trust that Members will 
look at each amendment and listen to the debate carefully. And in the 
end, I hope that Members will make the right decision and vote for a 
more rational and measured product liability system rather than for the 
trial lawyers.
                              {time}  2045

  Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from 
Michigan [Mr. Dingell], the honorable ranking Member of our Committee 
on Commerce.
  Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Chairman, I thank the distinguished gentleman from 
Louisiana for yielding.
  Mr. Chairman, I have supported product liability reform for over a 
decade. In 1988 I presided over the infamous ``torts class from hell'' 
when the Committee on Energy and Commerce spent 10 long days in a 
markup to report a product liability reform bill. Regrettably, that 
bill died when other committees failed to take action. Since then, I 
have repeatedly cosponsored other major legislation on this subject 
[[Page H2875]] and have sought to see to it that it was enacted into 
law.
  I observed that this is a painful process to me because it is my view 
that the bill is being rammed through the House. Unlike previous 
efforts, there has been little meaningful attempt to work out a 
bipartisan piece of legislation, fair and balanced. The rush to 
judgment has produced a number of defects, inconsistencies, and errors, 
and indeed it has been fraught with what I view as being procedural 
errors and failures. Despite my misgivings about the process and 
certain provisions, I voted in favor of the Committee on Commerce bill. 
I did so because the core of the bill was consistent with those that I 
had previously supported and because there were assurances made at the 
markup that some of the bill's shortcomings would be corrected.
  I will note, however, that under the probable rule, opportunities to 
correct some of the defects which I seek will become much smaller and 
much less opportune, but before the ink on the Committee on Commerce 
bill was dry, Chairman Hyde and Chairman Bliley introduced yet another 
bill, H.R. 1075. This new bill differed significantly from the bill I 
voted for in committee.
  One major change is the punitive damages provisions of H.R. 1075. 
They apply to all actions for harm, not just product liability actions. 
I am curious why this is so. It is possible it is motivated by any of a 
number of reasons, one, to protect all wrongdoers from punitive actions 
and two, to open up the bill so perhaps more extreme legislation 
unrelated to product liability reform might be considered. I hope that 
that second course will not be followed. The idea of limiting punitive 
damages and product liability actions is something I am willing to 
consider carefully but I do not believe that this legislation should be 
use to enact wholesale changes to all of our Federal and State law with 
regard to civil actions in the courts of the Federal Government or the 
several States.
  I am particularly concerned about the amendments that might arise to 
limit medical malpractice liability and to put severe limits on 
noneconomic damages in all civil cases. I believe that something should 
be done about medical malpractice liability, but I believe it should be 
done carefully and with consistency in terms of good practice of the 
kind that we have seen over the years. This bill should be about 
product liability reform, not about rewriting liability laws for all 
State and Federal cases.
  Amendments that go to key provisions in this bill on product 
liability reform should be debated on and they should be voted on and 
sufficient time should be given. If the bill becomes an attempt to 
rewrite all civil liability law without hearings, without consideration 
in the committees of jurisdiction, and without proper notice and 
opportunity to participate for all Members, it will certainly diminish 
bipartisan support for the bill and threaten support for product 
liability reform. That would be a shame because we worked too long to 
try to achieve reform of what is a serious economic, social, and other 
problem.
  I will participate in the debate allowed by this rule. I intend to 
listen to the arguments on all sides. I hope that fair and balanced 
debate will lead to fair and balanced product liability reform 
legislation, as I have for many years. But this bill cannot become a 
vehicle for another attempt to deal with issues outside the needed 
reform.
  Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Gekas].
  Mr. GEKAS. I thank the gentleman from Illinois.
  Mr. Chairman, when the evidence is in, we hope that the American 
public acting as the jury of us all will be able to render a final 
verdict in favor of what we are attempting to do here, and exhibit A 
among the evidence that we are going to present the American people is 
title III, for instance, in this bill.
  Here is the situation, and I ask the public to weigh this. We have an 
individual who is suffering from severe heart disease. The doctors who 
were attending this individual insist that the only way that life can 
be saved or life made better for this individual is for a valve of some 
sort to be implanted in the body of this individual. It has come to 
pass that medical devices that are intricately prescribed for this kind 
of condition have become scarce on the market, not because the 
innovative spirit of the scientists and doctors and practitioners and 
inventors who are involved in this field do not have new products and 
new ways of doing things, but because suppliers of the raw materials 
that go ultimately into the manufacture of these medical devices have 
found themselves liable to suits in which they have been found not to 
be culpable in the long run, but which has caused them millions of 
dollars in expenses for litigation, not to mention the time expended 
away from their ordinary business to defend a suit that ultimately ends 
up on their favor, but because they do not want the hassle of this kind 
of liability, they are leaving the marketplace, and that leaves the 
individual with the heart disease, the consumer, if you will, because 
this is a pro-consumer tenet that we are advancing here on this 
products liability bill, that consumer no longer has access to a heart 
valve that is important to saving that individual's life. That is what 
this is all about, and we can expand this type of example to hundreds 
of other examples in the marketplace which prevent, because of 
liability suits and the reluctance of companies to advance new 
products, depriving the consumer of lower prices, of a better 
selection, of new innovation devices and, in the example that I have 
offered to you here tonight and which is supported by many people in 
this room here tonight, the consumer, the consumer that we most want to 
benefit, the patient, the heart disease patient, the brain-damaged 
individual, the one who requires a hip joint or any other kinds of 
medical devices that can save lives or produce a better quality of 
life, the marketplace is shrinking because we do not have the type of 
legislation which we offer here tonight.
  Mr. CONYERS. I am delighted to yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman 
from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder].
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Michigan for 
yielding.
  Mr. Chairman, I think the way to frame this bill is this is the 
Washington-knows-best bill, and, for the life of me, I cannot figure 
out why we are doing this. We are here upsetting over 200 years of 
tradition and we are doing it after almost everyone has gone home. 
Let's face it, only the committees are here debating and this whole 
thing has been ramrodded through.
  We are beginning to see now what people who contributed to the 
campaign are getting. The fat cats are going to get their tax cuts and 
they are going to get a huge liability shield, because that is what we 
are really constructing here is a shield for them against any 
liability.
  It is almost like saying the Congress has now decided that the 
highest value in America is making money, making money at any cost. I 
mean, we want these fat cats to not have to deal with regulation, 
heaven forbid, because they might have to make something safe, and 
then, if you have taken the regulation away, you have got to change the 
legal rules, because otherwise, they are going to get sued.
  So if we can take away the regulation and take away the legal rules, 
wow, and America will be out there and we will be competitive again. I 
guess this is the new trickle down thing. So the employers will all be 
happy because they will have more money and hire more workers if the 
workers do not happen to get hurt. But if they do, it is too bad.
  I find this really, really surprising, because this has very severe 
limits on damages. We are saying to all the State legislatures, we know 
better than you. Of course not in school lunch. We are going to take 
school lunches and give it back to the State legislature. They are 
nutritional experts but they do not know anything about product 
liability or torts or whether or not they want to put punitive damages 
on sexual abusive people and so forth and so on. We are going to take 
all that away from them and they get to do nutrition, which I think is 
really interesting.
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from 
Massachusetts.
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I do not want her to 
suggest 
[[Page H2876]] that our friends on the other side are indifferent to 
the fate of these children at the Federal level. Is it not true that if 
everything they want goes through, while the school lunch program would 
be in the hands of the State and they would decide without competitive 
bidding who would be the suppliers, if a child in fact were to have an 
untoward incident in what he or she ate, they would sue under Federal 
law so it would be a State administered law but it would be a Federal 
lawsuit?
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. You got it. And then, of course, the child, not 
having a wage, would have a lot of trouble because of noneconomic 
damages, and children are certainly, most of them, I think the child 
labor laws are still in effect, but I have not looked, is that in the 
contract too, because a child does not have a job, they come out on the 
short end of the stick because they fall under the noneconomic damages 
that we are talking about.
  I just find this something that is very drastic, and it really is 
changing the course of what we thought government was for. I thought 
government was to help protect the little guy from the big guy. Now we 
are finding out the government is helping protect the big guy from the 
little guy.
  Well, most of the big guys I know have done a pretty good job of 
protecting themselves and I must say, I am very, very saddened by this.
                              {time}  2100

  Mrs. SCHROEDER. As I stand here looking at things that States have 
done that make sense to me, I am saddened. When you see people saying 
we ought to get kingpin drug dealers that are out pushing drugs to 
young kids and we ought to be able to get them in civil court, where 
obviously the standards are not as high, and we ought to be able to hit 
them with punitive damages, we are going to come in tonight and say no, 
we do not think so. We do not want kingpins to pay more than $250,000.
  Mr. BLILEY. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. I yield to the gentleman from Virginia.
  Mr. BLILEY. Is the gentlewoman a lawyer?
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. Yes, I most certainly am.
  Mr. BLILEY. Is the lady's husband a lawyer?
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. Yes, he most certainly is.
  We know what punitive damages are, and what we are doing tonight is 
we are putting a cap on punitive damages. Now, the $250,000 might be a 
lot to us, but to a kingpin drug dealer it is not very much.
  Mr. BLILEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the 
gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Oxley], the chairman of the subcommittee.
  Mr. OXLEY. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Common Sense 
Product Liability and Legal Reform Act. Product liability reform has 
occupied the Subcommittee on Commerce, which I chair, for almost two 
decades. It is testimony to the strength of the opposition that never 
before has this House considered comprehensive liability reform, but a 
new day has dawned. Let those who wish to defend the status quo do so, 
but my sense is that the American public is far ahead of them on this 
very important issue. Members of both the majority and the minority 
parties have worked hard for many years on product liability reform, 
and at least success is in sight.
  Our bill comes to the floor today under the able leadership of 
Chairman Bliley, and I commend him for his efforts. I thank the ranking 
committee member, my friend from Michigan, Mr. Dingell, for his 
leadership on this issue over the many years. I know he is frustrated 
by both the pace and the process of this bill, but I commend the 
gentleman for his commitment to reform, which has remained constant 
through these years.
  I also want to thank the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Tauzin], my 
ranking member, again for his excellent work in this area. I also want 
to thank the Committee on Energy and Commerce staff who has worked long 
and hard, Doug Bennett, Robert Gordon, and Hugh Halpern for the 
majority, David Tittsworth for the minority, for their constant and 
hard work as well.
  My colleagues on both sides of the aisle know that the product 
liability system in America costs the people of this country dearly. We 
pay more for products, we are denied life-saving medicines, we force 
companies to lay off workers, and we suffocate innovation. Just listen 
to the numbers.
  Because of product liability exposure, 47 percent of American 
manufacturers have withdrawn products from the U.S. market; 39 percent 
have decided not to introduce new products; 25 percent have 
discontinued new product research. These decisions hit consumers, and 
it hits them hard. The Conference Board reports that again as a direct 
result of existing product liability laws, 36 percent of American 
manufacturers have stopped some manufacturing; 15 percent have laid off 
workers; and 8 percent have closed plants. What does our product 
liability system offer American workers? Lost jobs and lost 
opportunities.
  Mr. Chairman, opponents of this legislation have portrayed the bill 
as anticonsumer. Nothing could be further from the truth. The status 
quo is anticonsumer and antiworker. America's liability system is a 
huge liability to American and its workers.
  The bill before us today is effective, it is fair, and it is long 
overdue. It protects the right of those injured by defective products 
to recover all damages, both economic and noneconomic. It puts an end 
to the abuse of punitive damages and provides a reasonable statute of 
repose.
  Manufacturers will be encouraged to innovate and compete and sellers 
of products will no longer face unlimited punishment for sins they did 
not commit. H.R. 956 loosens the self-imposed strangled hold our 
liability system places on the American economy.
  Mr. Chairman, I do not want to take a lot of time, so I will close 
with the words of Francois Castaing, vice president of engineering for 
Chrysler Corp.

       It is well understood that product liability laws have a 
     purpose. They are supposed to compensate for injury, promote 
     safety and penalize gross negligence. If a corporation is 
     irresponsible, it should be held accountable. But the 
     situation in the United States has gone beyond punishing 
     gross negligence. Now punishment is meted out for many risks 
     that simply cannot be avoided when a product is produced and 
     sold to a public that has wide discretion in how it chooses 
     to use that product. When no distinctions are made in 
     assigning responsibility for risk and all companies are held 
     responsible--and penalized--for all risk, the ability to 
     innovate, engineer, and compete is compromised.

  Mr. Chairman, I am in strong support of this legislation. We have 
worked on this for a number of years in our committee. I think the 
efforts by the Committee on the Judiciary and our committee have 
brought us here today, where we can pass an outstanding bill with a 
good, strong, bipartisan support.
  I would say to those who would continue to defend the status quo, 
that the burden of proof is on you to prove that the current system is 
not inimical to the American worker.
  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, would it be useful for the Chairman to 
summarize how much time remains for each of the parties?
  The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Tauzin] has 26 
minutes remaining; the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Bliley] has 22 
minutes remaining; the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde] has 19 
minutes remaining, and the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Conyers] has 22 
minutes remaining.
  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to my friend, the 
honorable gentleman from Texas, [Mr. Bryant].
  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from 
Texas [Mr. Bryant].
  The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Texas [Mr. Bryant] is recognized for 
6 minutes.
  Mr. BRYANT of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for 
yielding.
  I would say to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Oxley], yes, Chrysler 
Corp. ought to be quoted in this debate. They have had the best 5 or 6 
years of the company's history. They are doing extremely well. I own 
two of their products. So is Ford and so is General Motors. They are 
doing better than ever. Products liability cases have not kept them 
from doing well. They are doing extremely well.
  I will say to the gentleman from Virginia, [Mr. Bliley] who said a 
moment ago at the beginning of his remarks 
[[Page H2877]] that this is the end of 20 years of working on products 
liability reform, the truth is, this is the culmination of 20 years of 
these big companies campaigning for products liability reform. Not 
based possible upon any empirical data, because there is not any to 
support your case; not based upon any economic studies, because there 
is not any to support your case.
  You called the witnesses before your committee, Mr. Hyde, and you 
called them before your committee, Mr. Bliley. You all set up these 
hearings, and I was at both of them. And I asked the question, do any 
of you guys have an empirical data to show that there is a products 
liability crisis in terms of the increase in the number of cases or 
increase in the size of the verdicts? And they all said no, we do not 
have any data like that.
  In fact, the data is just the opposite. The National Center for State 
Courts finds that product liability cases are only 4 percent of all 
tort filings; tort filings are only 9 percent of all civil filings; 
civil filings are only 27 percent of all cases; which means that 
product liability cases represent a mere .36 percentage point of the 
civil caseload. Thirty-six hundredths of a point of the civil caseload.
  In addition, in recent years the number of product liability filings 
has been steadily declining. If you challenge me, I will quote the 
studies for you. Steadily declining.
  There is no data to support the movement you are asking this House to 
take in this bill. The fact is this is the culmination of a 20-year 
campaign that goes on, on the radio as we speak. One of the cases that 
you all like to talk about and be derisive of and they like to talk 
about on the radio all the time is the McDonald's coffee case.
  Well, we found out the other day why you had not heard the other side 
of the McDonald's coffee case, because the lady who filed the case has 
a secrecy order imposed upon her. She could not talk about it. While 
McDonald's was talking about it, she could not talk about it. What were 
the facts? McDonald's was warned 700 times by complaints from people 
saying they had been burned by this super-heated coffee.
  The average temperature of the coffee was 180 to
   190 degrees. You are warned not to keep your hot water heater over 
135 degrees because it might scald your children. Yet McDonald's 
continued. Here are pictures of three cases that you did not read about 
right here. You did not hear about these cases.

  Here is an 11-year-old boy from South Carolina. The coffee he was 
holding spilled, causing horrible scalding. Tests conducted during the 
trial showed that the coffee was 180 degrees when spilled, even though 
it was poured 15 minutes earlier. That is what happened to that 11-
year-old kid.
  I have a picture here of a 3-year-old child. She was burned when she 
was 1\1/2\-years-old. The same situation. McDonald's coffee, they were 
warned but they did not do anything about it. Other folks in the coffee 
business have not had this problem.
  This woman, this is a tragic case. She was critically burned when a 
cup of McDonald's coffee burned down the front of her body in Las 
Cruces, NM. She spent the following months in the hospital, remained 
wheelchair bound after the discharge, the wounds never completely 
healed, and she died 2 months after being released from the hospital.
  Now, you can make fun of these cases if you want to, but what are 
these people supposed to do, Mr. Hyde? What are these people supposed 
to do, Mr. Bliley? Just take it? They complained and nothing was done. 
The only way you get corporate America to move is tell them if you do 
not do something about it, you are going to be sued or you are going to 
lose money one way or the other. How else are they to deal with it?
  You can make fun of these people if you want to, but they were 
burned, they were hurt. So they took the case to finality. You did not 
hear about these cases. You heard about the so-called $2.7 million 
verdict which that lady got. You know what? She got it because the jury 
heard this company had 700 times been warned and still did not change 
their behavior. The jury got mad and stuck them with a big giant 
punitive verdict. Of course, it was cut down to $400,000 by the judge 
later.
  That is what goes on, and that is what you are trying to prevent. You 
have put a cap now on punitive damages in this bill. What a curiosity. 
Your cap on punitive damages now says that even if a person is found 
guilty in court of sexually abusing a child, now the Republican bill is 
going to put a cap on the punitive damages.
  I think what I have said speaks for itself. This is a bad bill. You 
ought to be ashamed for bringing it before the House.
  Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BRYANT of Texas. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. DOGGETT. Let me ask the gentleman if the lack of any data to 
support this bill is why these special interests are hiding behind the 
skirts and the little league outfits of the Girl Scouts of America, and 
whether you are aware of the fact that the Girl Scouts of America have 
repudiated this ad that is on television?
  Mr. BRYANT of Texas. I am aware of it. It is an outrage. That is 
exactly why they are hiding behind it. They have no empirical data to 
back that bill up.
  Mr. DOGGETT. For every one of these so-called horror stories they 
tell us about, there is a real live horror story, just like you told us 
about at McDonald's.
  Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds to tell the 
gentlemen on the other side I have 3 pages of studies here. I know they 
are not familiar with them, but if they want to see them, we will get 
them Xeroxed and have them sent to their offices.
  Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. 
Hoke].
  Mr. HOKE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I 
thank the gentleman for his leadership in bringing this bill to the 
floor. It has been a long time coming. I would say to my friends on the 
other side of the aisle, first of all, that I personally sat in a 
meeting in which the executive director of the Girl Scouts of America 
for Washington, DC, told an entire group of people in a public place 
that they had to sell 87,000 boxes of Girl Scout cookies just to pay 
their insurance premiums; that they no longer can use diving boards in 
their pools, they can no longer rent cars, they no longer can have 
horses in the summertime in their camps, because of their problems with 
liability insurance.
  The other thing I would say is, what I really want to talk about is 
exactly what they are concerned about, and that is special interests, 
because the fact is that there are Democrats in this House that are 
working overtime to defeat these reforms to end lawsuit abuse. And it 
is an ugly side of American politics that is rarely talked about. But 
you have got to follow the money if you want to figure out what is 
really going on.
  What you find out when you follow the money is that in the 1993-94 
cycle, 341 Democrats were given money by the American Trial Lawyers 
Association. Ninety-four percent of all of the contributions that that 
PAC, that special interest political action committee gave were to 
Democrats. Thirteen out of 15 Members, Democrat Members of the House 
Committee on the Judiciary received substantial contributions, up to 
$12,000. We are talking about $114,500, $2 million given in the last 
cycle, the 1993-94 cycle, to Democrat candidates.
  While it is lovely to talk about that this is for the women and this 
is for children and what we are really doing is protecting consumers, I 
thank you have to ask yourself who is really being spoken for in this 
regard.
  Mr. Chairman, just to sum up, the fact is if you want to take a look 
at politics in America, it would be very disingenuous, you would be 
missing the point, if you did not also look at the money. When it comes 
to money, the trial lawyers have purchased themselves an awful lot of 
time in this Congress. They have made tremendous investments over a 
long, long period.

                              {time}  2115

  And when you are going to see this debate, you will see this debate 
couched in the terms of consumers versus anticonsumers, of prochildren 
versus antichildren, of prowomen versus antiwomen. That is not what 
this debate is about. It is pro-trial lawyers against proconsumers, 
people who are 
[[Page H2878]] really trying to make the system work for American 
workers once again.
  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from 
Massachusetts [Mr. Frank].
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, we are seeing over these 
next couple of days one of the most complete degradations of the 
legislative process I have ever been sorry enough to witness. I am a 
supporter of product liability reform. I voted in the last Congress for 
medical malpractice reform. I voted for caps. I was prepared to support 
a good product liability bill, but the procedure and the substance to 
which we are going to be subjected over the next couple of days are so 
degraded and degrading and I cannot be part of it.
  In the first place, we have the great inconsistency of people talking 
about States' rights. And the gentleman from Illinois said, Well, we 
are being inconsistent. No, most of us have not claimed to be either 
consistently for States' rights or Federal rights. Many of us have 
said, You look at it issue by issue and you see what makes the most 
sense.
  The Republican Party that has clothed itself in States' rights garb 
until and unless their corporate allies decide they want it differently 
and then they change. And when the corporate allies say, Do not let 
States experiment with single-payer health insurance, don't amend 
ERISA, they say, OK. And when we federalize tort law, they say, OK, 
especially when it has nothing to do with manufacturing.
  We heard a great rationale from the Chairman of the Committee on the 
Judiciary. This is all about manufacturing. The gentleman said in the 
Rules Committee, This is about exports. We don't export Little 
Leaguers. Sometimes they play the Taiwan but they come back. They are 
not an export.
  The amendments that are about to come--and this is all preordained, 
these amendment will pass--the amendments that are going to come will 
put limits on the amount of noneconomic damages that can be awarded 
into virtually any civil case in America. So this argument that this is 
justified because manufacturing is an economic activity is nonsensical. 
The Girl Scouts do not manufacture.
  There may or may not be a case for covering the Girl Scouts or the 
Little League or every other lawsuit, but we are are not talking about 
manufacturing. We are also not talking about anything that resembles a 
respectable legislative process. In the Committee on the Judiciary 
controversial amendments on medical malpractice, et cetera, that were 
offered were withdrawn so they couldn't be debated. They will now come 
forward here.
  I have voted in the past for medical malpractice reform. I have voted 
for limitations, and I say to my friends who are pressing for that, if 
you make a pact of this sort to take legislation and give it no hearing 
in this Congress and no markup in committee, if it is withdrawn and 
then pulled back, and then it comes up to be debated for a grand total 
of 40 minutes in the House, do not expect those of us who 
conscientiously agree with you to vote with you.
  We have a list of amendments, 40 minutes, 20 minutes, 10 minutes, 
extending this legislation to virtually every civil lawsuit in America, 
expressing the contempt the majority apparently feels for the jury 
system, because what they say is the jury does not count.
  We got an example of the intellectual level of the argument when the 
gentlewoman from Colorado was interrupted by the gentleman from 
Virginia. The gentlelady was nice enough to yield and the gentleman 
said, Are you a lawyer and is your husband a lawyer? That is third-
grade type of debate and this is what we are getting in this complex 
legislation.
  If you only have 40 minutes to talk about it, I
   suppose that is what you get. And it comes from someone who has been 
supportive of malpractice reform and who wants to support product 
liability reform. I say to those of my friends who want it, if you are 
serious about it, you will break this alliance with people who show 
such disrespect for the legislative process, such disrespect for your 
intellects, such total disrespect for the jury system, and decide 
because they have raw numbers, people who will vote however they are 
told, then they will win. They will win a short-term victory and and 
they will discredit the important cause of product liability reform and 
those of us who really want to see it will in fact be suffering, 
because what will happen is by this unfair, overloaded, under-debated 
bill, they will bury the good.

  Mr. BLILEY. I yield myself 1\1/2\ minutes.
  I will point out to the gentleman on the other side that between 1973 
and 1988 product liability suits in Federal courts increased 1,000 
percent. In State courts, the increase was between 300 and 500 percent. 
One estimate of the total cost of these suits is $132 billion a year, a 
sum equal to the combined profits of the Nation's 200 largest 
corporations. And I stipulate that that is the reason that we are here 
debating this.
  To the gentleman from Massachusetts I would say, when we were accused 
today in a bill that we passed overwhelmingly with bipartisan support 
for securities litigation reform, that we were bringing this because we 
were rewarding our fat cats, maybe some of us might beg to say that the 
gentleman on the other might be trying to defend them.
  Mr. Chairman, that may be one of the reasons that they so 
vociferously defend the current system is that one of the heaviest 
contributors to their campaign coffers are the trial lawyers of the 
United States.
  Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado [Mr. 
Schaefer].
  (Mr. SCHAEFER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. SCHAEFER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time.


                         parliamentary inquiry

  Mr. BRYANT of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.
  The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman will state it.
  Mr. BRYANT of Texas. Do the rules prohibit implying a motive or the 
improper motive on the part of your adversary in debate for presenting 
legislation?
  The CHAIRMAN. The rules of the House prevent Members from engaging in 
personal attacks.
  Mr. BRYANT of Texas. I thank the Chair. But my further inquiry was, 
do the rules prohibit you from implying a prohibited motive, unsavory 
motive for offering amendments for advocating legislation?
  The CHAIRMAN. The rules do not prohibit Members from engaging in 
discussions of political motivation.
  Mr. BRYANT of Texas. What about motivations that relate to your 
personal occupation or your personal sources of income?
  The CHAIRMAN. The rules prohibit Members from engaging in personal 
attacks.
  Mr. BRYANT of Texas. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. SCHAEFER. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in strong support of the 
Common Sense Product Liability and Legal Reform Act of 1995.
  Members of the House, frivolous litigation has become a fact of 
American life whether we like to recognize it or not. Too often 
bringing people to court has taken the place of personal 
responsibility. Much of this behavior is due to the distorted 
incentives built into our current product liability laws.
  Today, many people no longer look at themselves first to blame but 
instead search out the easiest way for a big court settlement. 
Overzealous litigation costs consumers literally billions of dollars 
every year. This price inflation comes in the form of liability 
insurance costs built to price products and services, estimated to be 
approximately $1,200 per person each year.
  This litigation tax, as you might call it, is extremely regressive, 
raising the price of products to those that least can afford them. 
Unfortunately, the Committee on Commerce and Committee on the Judiciary 
have crafted a piece of legislation that restored sanity to the 
Nation's liability system. I would like
 to address one portion of that and that is the biomaterials access 
provision, and my good friend the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. 
Gekas] did hit on that but I would like to expand a bit.

  One of America's leading industries is the biomaterial device field. 
These products literally save and enhance 
[[Page H2879]] lives everyday from pacemakers to artificial heart 
valves to cataract replacements. These products provide recovery and 
allow people to continue their lives.
  The suppliers of base materials oftentimes provide the manufacturer 
with elements of the device that are too costly to produce except in 
mass quantities but alone have no implant value or purpose. 
Unfortunately, in recent times these suppliers have been named as 
codefendents in lawsuits, and in almost every case they are cleared of 
wrongdoing or negligence. Nevertheless, in the process they are forced 
to expend financial resources to achieve exoneration and to provide 
insurance.
  The litigation risk has caused many supply companies to simply stop 
providing base materials for these lifesaving devices. Consequently the 
inability of device manufacturers to obtain the needed base supplies is 
causing the death of the biomaterials industry in this country.
  The biomaterials section addresses this tragic consequence of 
overzealous litigation. This language will ensure that simply unless 
the supplier is negligent in the design specification requested by the 
device manufacturer or if the supplier is also a party in the overall 
manufacture or marketing of the device, the supplier is cleared of 
liability.
  Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support this long overdue 
legislation, the Common Sense Product Liability and Legal Reform Act, 
which will help put an end to frivolous litigation while preserving 
each person's right to seek out compensation for real injury.
  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 6 minutes.
  Mr. Chairman, let me return the very fine compliments of the 
gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Oxley] the chairman of our subcommittee, for 
the work that was done in our Committee on Commerce on this bill.
  I should also quickly acknowledge the extraordinary efforts put in 
over the last 12 years of the former chairman of our committee, Mr. 
Dingell, who spoke earlier tonight. Mr. Dingell has been committed to 
the issue of product liability reform for many, many years. This was in 
1988 when our committee finally agreed upon a product liability reform 
bill and produced it for the House, that bill unfortunately never made 
it to the House floor because it could not come out of the other 
subcommittee of jurisdiction. As a result, the product liability reform 
bill that Mr. Dingell and our committee fought so hard for in 1988 died 
its unnatural death in Congress and it has never until this day had a 
chance to be debated again.
  The bill we have before us is in many ways like that bill of 1988 and 
in many substantial ways very different. It is a bill that does, in 
fact, divide standards of liability between economic and noneconomic 
damages.
  Joint and several liability for economic losses, the losses you can 
put your finger on, the ones you can put an easy dollar equation on, 
and several proportionate liability for noneconomic losses, losses that 
are harder to estimate, the pain and suffering, the mental anguish and 
such that jurors very often award in numbers that surprise us.
  The bill also deals, as our bill did in 1988 with punitive damages, 
also it deals with them very differently and with a statute of repose 
although it deals with it very differently.
  I want to for a minute talk about those differences. In the statute 
of repose that we produced in 1988, a statute, a section of the bill 
that was designed to end liability for products that were manufactured 
many years ago, the statute of repose time was set at 25 years. This 
bill sets it at 15. We are told the reason it is set at 15 is to 
coincide more nearly with State statutes of repose which are generally 
in the 10- to 12-year range. But the big difference is that this 
statute of repose extends beyond capital goods, the goods that are 
normally depreciated, heavy machinery, and now extends to all products. 
That is a big change and one that we will want to debate I am sure when 
we get to the amendments on that section and on the bill.
  On the punitive damages area, there are two very--three very large 
differences as we look at the bill as it arises on the floor. The first 
large area of difference is the fact that the punitive damage cap, 
which is set in this bill which was apparently not in the bill in 1988, 
is set not only at $250,000 on products but it now is made to apply to 
all tort law and all civil suits, both State and Federal law, in civil 
actions for harm where plaintiffs, in fact, prove by a clear and 
convincing evidence conduct that was specifically intended to cause 
harm, intentional harm.
                              {time}  2130

  There are two other differences. In the bill that we produced in 
1988, we clearly said that the provisions on statute of repose did not 
apply to any plaintiff who did not have their medical bills paid. That 
bill, that provision, is still included in this bill, but I understand 
there will be an amendment from the other side to delete that language. 
I hope that does not occur, I hope we have a chance to debate the 
reason why that provision was in the 1988 bill and is currently 
contained in this statute.
  In the punitive damage area, there was an exemption from punitive 
damages for drugs that were previously approved by the FDA. That 
exemption has been deleted from this bill. There will be an attempt, I 
will join in that attempt, to reinstate that exemption. The reason is, 
punitive damages are designed in our civil procedure as a quasi-fine. 
How ludicrous it is to find a company for producing a product that we 
ourselves as a government approved. If that product causes some harm, 
it makes sense to make sure the harm is repaid, the harm is made whole, 
but should the government punish someone in a civil action or in a 
regulatory or criminal action for an action that the government itself 
approved? We are going to debate that tomorrow and I hope frankly we 
can come to the conclusion that that exemption ought to be returned to 
the bill as it did apply to the bill in 1988.
  As I said, the major difference in the punitive damage section is a 
cap in this application to all civil suits. We will debate that. I 
personally have a problem with punitive damages in civil suits, so 
capping them is not as severe a problem for me as it is for other 
folks.
  But I want to make a point that I hope we get a chance to make in 
debate tomorrow. I am disappointed frankly when I see the list of 
amendments that will be offered that we will not have an opportunity to 
offer more amendments in this section. Punitive damages are designed to 
punish a defendant who put us all at risk. My question is why should 
those damages go to the plaintiff? My question is why should not a very 
large percent of those damages go to the general public? If a company, 
a person, puts us all at risk with a product, the plaintiff obviously 
ought to receive some benefit for having brought that suit and called 
that to the court's attention and recovered some measure of damages for 
the rest of us. But a punitive damage award, a quasi-fine, ought to in 
fact insure to the benefit of the public at large. Some States have 
done that in their laws. We will have a chance to look at at least one 
amendment that does that but I would hope that the majority would 
permit us to look at different ways of characterizing punitive damages 
so that the public at large benefits when a fine is levied in a civil 
case in the form of a punitive damage.
  Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. BLILEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1\1/2\ minutes.
  I would ask my friends on the other side of the aisle, do they think 
there is really any coincidence in the fact that for 20 years the 
Judiciary Committee has refused to allow a bill on this subject to come 
to the floor for debate and the fact that their members that were there 
in the majority received overwhelming contributions from the Trial 
Lawyers Association?
  Mr. BRYANT of Texas. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BLILEY. On his own time.
  Mr. BRYANT of Texas. You asked a question. Let me answer it for you. 
Do I have the time, Mr. Chairman?
  The CHAIRMAN. The committee will be in order. The gentleman from 
Virginia controls the time.
  Mr. BRYANT of Texas. Will the gentleman yield?
  The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Virginia is recognized.
  [[Page H2880]] Mr. BLILEY. Would the Chair ask the gentleman to stop 
interrupting?
  The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Virginia controls the time and is 
recognized.
  Mr. BLILEY. I thank the Chair. May we have order?
  The CHAIRMAN. The committee will be in order.
  Mr. BLILEY. I thank the Chair.
  I also would point out that in a recent article in the Wall Street 
Journal that Creighton Hale, the CEO of Little League Baseball, wrote 
of a case in which a volunteer coach was sued for punitive damages in 
pain and suffering after one of his youthful outfielders was beaned by 
a pop fly. These types of suits lead to skyrocketing insurance costs.
  A spokesman for the Girl Scout Council of the Nation's capital tells 
us that they have to sell an additional 87,000 boxes of cookies 
annually just to pay their liability premiums.
  With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from 
Illinois [Mr. Hastert], a valued member of the committee.
  Mr. HASTERT. I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time, and I 
certainly thank him for his great work on the bill on product 
liability. And certainly the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Oxley], our 
chairman of the subcommittee, has done yeoman's work as well, working 
the last few years with the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Dingell], the 
chairman of the then majority, in trying to put together H.R. 1910.
  I have been involved in trying to work on product liability since I 
first came to Congress and certainly have looked forward to 
participating in this debate on the floor for many, many years.
  Last year I was the cosponsor with a gentleman from the other side of 
the aisle by the name of Doc Rowland, a former member from Georgia, who 
was committed to bringing on the Fairness in Product Liability Act, and 
along with that we had garnered 126 cosponsors from both sides of the 
aisle.
  I might also add that many of the provisions of this bill came from 
H.R. 1910, which was that act. It is plain to see that this is a 
bipartisan issue.
  I was also extremely pleased to see that this issue was important 
enough that it was included in the contract.
  As Members know, this issue of product liability reform is a mature 
issue that has been around for some 14 years. The Committee on Commerce 
was fortunate to hear from some true veterans of the field that have 
appreciated the hard work and commitment that many have made to this 
issue. I know they are just as pleased as I am to see the House is 
finally considering it on this floor.
  Since I first became involved with product liability, I have been 
amazed at the adverse effects our current system has on American 
productivity, competitiveness and innovation.
  We talk here a lot in Congress about competitiveness. We try to find 
ways to encourage it through legislation. I can tell Members without a 
doubt that if we enact this bill, we will boost the ability of American 
industry to compete. The best news is it will not cost taxpayers a 
dime.
  United States liability costs are 15 times greater than Japan's and 
20 times greater than Europe's. These costs represent American dollars 
not spent for research or development or employee benefits or new job 
creation. U.S. costs are higher because all manufacturers, U.S. or 
foreign, sell most of their products at home. Since liability costs per 
product are based on liability exposure, and exposure is so much less 
under the legal systems of our competitors, our liability costs are 
higher than those of other countries.
  It seems to me that we should be encouraging American companies to 
stay in business. But this flawed system under which we currently work 
has just the opposite effect. We are not saying that you cannot file a 
suit if you have been wrongfully harmed or a company has been knowingly 
negligent, but if you pick up your lawn mower to use as a hedge 
trimmer, then you should not be able to sue the manufacturer. This bill 
only limits the number of lawsuits that have little or no merit.
  If we were only interested in employing lawyers, then maybe we would 
not need to be concerned about product liability. But American families 
are paying more for everything they buy, from their air conditioners to 
their Zenith TV's, because companies must pay billions for meritless 
lawsuits.
  I know some argue that we simply do not need to create uniform 
standard product liability laws. I have heard the opponents of the bill 
saying Republicans are doing an about-face, trying to pass laws on 
States from the Federal level, but the fact of the matter is that the 
creation of Federal uniform standard laws has been called for twice by 
the National Governors Association. Humor me for just a minute, but it 
is my guess that these folks are tuned in to what is needed at the 
State level.
  It is critical that the manufacturers of each of our districts have a 
good grasp of what their responsibilities are as producers. And our 
constituents' rights as consumers should not vary widely from State to 
State.
  I am hopeful that we will be able to address this issue, not only 
Republicans and Democrats as a united front here but as legislators 
committed to fixing the inequities and inconsistencies that currently 
exist in our laws.
  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to my friend the 
gentleman from Texas [Mr. Bryant].
  Mr. BRYANT of Texas. I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time.
  I would say that I think that the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. 
Hastert] is speaking out a sincere belief. I would just call upon you 
and those similarly situated in your position to base those kinds of 
beliefs on empirical data and there is no empirical data to support the 
conclusions which you offered to the House in your remarks. That is the 
fundamental reason why we oppose this legislation.
  The gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Bliley] has talked about campaign 
contributions. That is an unfortunate topic to get into I think from 
his standpoint. We could talk about campaign contributions from the 
cigarette industry which is located in your district, I know. In fact, 
I think it is the capital of it. But let me say this. I think the 
gentleman will be for this legislation even if he did not live within a 
thousand miles of a cigarette factory. I think he believes in it. I am 
not taking issue with your belief in it. But you suggested that our 
position is based upon the fact that the trial
 lawyers make contributions. I think I am typical in saying that many 
of the Members who have taken a strong position like mine have received 
as much as $10,000 in campaign contributions in each cycle, every two 
years, from the trial lawyers political action committee, out of 
probably $900,000 or so that gets spent. I have received probably 
$150,000 in campaign contributions from the companies' political action 
committees that support your position, and that is true of all of us 
over here, and you know that. There is one American Trial Lawyers 
Association PAC, there must be 2,000 corporate PAC's out there that 
agree with you.

  I really think it is important, it is more I think accurate of you to 
base your arguments, your conclusions, your opinions, if you had some 
data, and I do not think you do, you would base it upon that, but to 
suggest it is based on campaign contributions I think demeans all of 
it. I do not think it is based on those from you or based on those from 
me. But I do question on where you guys are getting your information.
  The gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde] waved around a list of studies 
earlier this evening and he waved them around once in the committee. I 
would like to get the list. I will come over and get it in just a 
second.
  The ones he read off in the committee were all studies that supported 
our side of the issue. I read to you from the minority report which 
made very clear that the number of products liability cases are going 
down, they are not a significant percentage of the overall cases. 
Obviously American industry is doing very well and I hope it does 
better in the future, but for goodness sakes, we have got to pay 
attention to the fact that we do have situations where corporations 
behave irresponsibly because they are human beings and all of our laws, 
all of our jurisprudence is written to deal with the behavior of a 
minority of every class, not a majority.
  I think General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are great assets in our 
society 
[[Page H2881]] but I think that they have in some cases behaved 
horribly. The Pinto case, all these other automobile cases, with an 
exploding gas tank, where they flip over, where they have not put a 
roll bar where they ought to put a roll bar and they cripple people. 
Look, they are human beings, giant bureaucracies. Some human beings in 
one corporation do not know what the other human beings are doing. We 
have no way to protect the public from this except a system of private 
litigation.
  As the point I made a moment ago, I think should be reiterated, that 
private litigation is a tiny percentage of the overall litigation.
  When you guys get up and talk about all the lawsuits, you forget that 
the lawsuits are commercial cases, 80 percent of them are commercial 
cases, not personal injury cases.
  Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the 
distinguished gentleman from New Mexico [Mr. Schiff], a valued 
committee member.
  Mr. SCHIFF. I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. I 
particularly want to commend his integrity in giving me this time since 
he knows full well in advance I do not fully support the leadership 
position on this bill.
  Mr. Chairman, I support a products liability bill. I think the 
rationale for it is not perfect. I think arguments can be legitimately 
made against a Federal products liability bill. But I think a case can 
be made and has been made for the idea that when goods are shipped in 
interstate commerce and the same good is for sale in different States, 
that there ought to be a Federal standard for how to handle tort 
litigation if there is an alleged defect in those goods because it is 
the same good, whether it is being sold in New Mexico or being sold in 
Illinois.
  However, there is no rationale for the second part of this bill, 
because as presently written, the first part of this bill deals with 
products liability, the second part, title II, does not deal with 
products liability. It deals with all tort litigation, and I am 
referring specifically to the punitive damages provision.
  As written, the bill says that all punitive damages actioned in State 
court are under the control of Federal legislation. So that if two 
individuals go out on their front lawns and start a fistfight with each 
other, Federal legislation will control the punitive damages standard, 
whatever it might be, in that particular case.
  I want to say particularly to my fellow Republicans, it is wrong. It 
is wrong for two reasons. First of all, it philosophically reverses 
everything we have been arguing for the last 2 months on everything. 
From police block grants to child nutrition programs, we have been 
saying that the States know best how to handle their local problems. 
Today we are saying, ``But they don't know how to set up a tort system 
within their courts on cases of simply local application.''

                              {time}  2145

  Second of all it is dangerous practically because Federal preemption 
is a genie that cannot be put back into the bottle once it is released 
if we exercise Federal preemption with respect to punitive damages in 
all cases of whatever kind in the State courts and we do so with a 
policy of limiting damages. A future Congress of a different 
philosophical mind can use that preemption and reverse it, not only 
reverse it, but they can say there will be no caps on punitive damages 
anywhere in the United States and they can preempt all of those States 
which have in fact already imposed caps on punitive damages.
  I offered an amendment to the Committee on Rules which would have 
allowed this body a vote on changing the punitive damages provision 
from applying to every single kind of case in the United States of 
America, no matter what it is, to limiting it to product liability. The 
rest of the bill is product liability, the argument in favor of the 
bill is based on product liability. The only problem is it is not what 
the bill says. I regret to say the Committee on Rules did not make that 
in order.
  I want to conclude by thanking the gentleman again for the time and 
by commending our Committee on Rules with respect to my colleagues on 
the democratic side. I have seen more openness and more fairness to 
rules granted under our Rules Committee in 2 months than I saw in the 
previous 6 years I was here, but in this particular case I think the 
Committee on Rules with respect to them made a mistake in not allowing 
a vote which is important as an issue and is important to the previous 
votes by our own party.
  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 3\1/2\ minutes to 
the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Scott].
  Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Chairman, I first want to point out that we obviously 
do not have enough time to debate the issue. As we have seen, Members 
do not even have time to yield to each other as is customarily.
  Second, I wanted to point out since the Girl Scouts have come up, the 
information I have is that the conference data base uncovered that only 
one punitive damage award was ever awarded against Little League, Boy 
Scouts of America, or Girl Scouts of America. This punitive damage 
award stemming from a sexual molestation claim was subsequently vacated 
by an appellate court.
  Mr. Chairman, the lawsuits we are talking about are designed to 
empower consumers who are ripped off, maimed or injured, but with the 
right to go to court every consumer is somebody. And if a corporation 
thinks about ripping somebody off or recklessly exposing them to 
serious injuries, because they want to make a little bit more profit, 
that corporation has to remember that every consumer has the right to 
be treated fairly. And they cannot calculate whether or not they can 
make a little bit more money by exposing someone to serious injuries or 
danger.
  With the changes made earlier this week, Mr. Chairman, we make it 
harder for individuals to bring suit. Even if they bring a suit and 
win, if they come in under the amount offered in settlement, a 
corporation is rewarded by that legislation, but the plaintiff, having 
had the nerve to challenge a corporate behavior, may end up losing 
their homes.
  Mr. Chairman, there are only a few punitive damage cases in American 
history. Let me just cite a few which are typical of the kind of cases 
we are talking about.
  We are talking about a 43-year-old teacher who was injured after 
having being treated with surgical bandages when the company knew that 
the bandages were contaminated. They had been notified on numerous 
occasions that the bandages in the warehouse were contaminated. The 
quality control director had placed a hold on the bandages, and they 
had nevertheless decided to sell the bandages and dispute the findings 
of the FDA and others that there was a contamination.
  The plaintiff suffered extensive scarring, loss of motion in his back 
and emotional distress. His medical bills are only $4,200 and that is 
the kind of behavior that would be protected if we pass this bill. That 
is Darby versus Western Medical Enterprises, a 1984 California case. 
And I want to cite that case so we do not get into these wild examples 
that you can never track down.
  Mr. Chairman, in Oglevie versus International Playtex, a significant 
punitive damage award, they had complied, technically complied with the 
Food and Drug Administration regulations, but the court found that 
there was an abundance of evidence that Playtex had deliberately 
disregarded studies and medical reports linking high-absorbency tampon 
fibers with increased risk of toxic shock syndrome when other 
manufacturers were responding to this information by modifying or 
withdrawing their products. Moreover, there is evidence that Playtex 
deliberately sought to profit from the situation by advertising their 
high-absorbency tampons when they knew that other manufacturers were 
recalling their products.
  Mr. Chairman, there are also cases of cotton flannel pajamas that the 
court found were just about as flammable as newsprint. They were hit 
with a punitive damage case.
  That is the kind of behavior we are trying to prevent.
  Mr. BLILEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds. I would hope 
that in the course of this very learned debate some Member on the other 
side would explain to us since they claim their motives are as pure as 
the driven snow, 
[[Page H2882]] why for 20 years the Judiciary Committee refused to 
allow any bill to come to this floor for any debate or any vote.
  Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. 
Ganske].
  Mr. GANSKE. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in strong support of the bill 
before the House. And I commend Chairman Hyde and Chairman Bliley for 
their efforts to pass real civil justice reform.
  This legislation creates uniform product liability laws. It is no 
news that juries have been out of control over the past decade in 
awarding punitive damages far in excess of what is necessary to make a 
plaintiff whole. Part of the blame rests with the system, because it 
gives juries very little guidance with which to make such awards.

  As Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell has pointed out--
       Courts simply instruct jurors in punitive damages cases to 
     determine what dollar amount between zero and infinity would 
     appropriately serve the States' interest * * * no act of the 
     legislature guides them, nor do any judicial instructions 
     narrow the range of appropriate punishment.

  Mr. Chairman, nobody supporting this bill wants to deny injured 
individuals access to the courts. Those injured by a defective product 
should have a proper legal remedy. Nothing in this bill would change 
that.
  Moreover, the bill does not place any limits on the size of economic 
damage awards. Contrary to what the trial lawyers want Americans to 
believe, injured individuals could still collect every penny to which 
they are entitled to make up for lost wages, both past and future. The 
damages would also include past and future medical expenses for the 
individual. These awards for economic loss would fully compensate the 
injured party for all of their out-of-pocket expenses.
  Trial lawyers would tell you that the provisions relating to punitive 
damages will deny fairness to injured parties. They could not be more 
mistaken. This bill does not ban punitive damages. But they are capped 
at $250,000 or three times economic damages, whichever is greater. In 
serious injury cases, in which the plaintiffs would have large medical 
bills and lost wages, the cap on punitive damages can quickly exceed 
several million dollars.
  Mr. Chairman, as Justice Powell has also observed,

       As recently as a decade ago, the largest punitive damages 
     award approved by an appellate court in a product liability 
     case was $250,000. Since then awards more than 30 times as 
     high have been sustained on appeal. It is long past time to 
     bring the law of punitive damages into conformity with our 
     notions of just punishment.

  Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support this bill.
  Mr. OXLEY. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. GANSKE. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
  Mr. OXLEY. I want to commend the gentleman for his statement and to 
point out the fact that we are making these plaintiffs whole; that is 
essentially the idea behind the law, is to make them whole. And I 
appreciate his statement because I think it really highlighted exactly 
why we are here today and I congratulate the gentleman on his 
statement.
  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 5 minutes.
  Mr. Chairman, we live in an age when attorneys are not very popular. 
That was evident when the movie ``Jurassic Park'' was such a big hit, 
and the only person eaten by that monster in ``Jurassic Park'' was a 
lawyer, and audiences stood and cheered. I was in one of the movie 
theaters and witnessed that awesome event.
  Having been schooled in the law myself at LSU Law School in Baton 
Rouge, and having a deep love and appreciation for the art of lawmaking 
and the general artistry of well-crafted laws and how they can help 
order our society and make our lives better when they work right, I 
want to quickly report that there are many lawyers in this body who do 
support product liability reform, and I am one of them.
  When I was a young state legislator in Louisiana, we had a 
proposition then before the States called no-fault insurance. I and 
several other young attorney legislators lead the fight for the 
adoption of a no-fault insurance bill in our State, a bill opposed 
generally by the Bar Association and the Lawyers Association of our 
State. We passed it out of the House; 17 of the 31 attorneys in the 
House voted for it, a majority.
  It died in the Senate on a tie vote; never became law. But 
nevertheless, it illustrated that an attorney can be and should be the 
most interested in making sure legal systems work. If anybody has a 
stake in improving the legal systems of our country certainly those who 
have been trained in the law, who have come to learn to love it and 
appreciate it as a working instrument of good in our society, have a 
major responsibility in correcting bad legal systems and making good 
legal systems out of them.
  That is what this effort is all about, and so I rise again tonight in 
strong support of reforms in our legal system and certainly in product 
liability reforms, such as we produced in 1988 and such as we are 
trying to produce on the floor of the House this week.
  But I also rise to sound a note of alarm and concern about some of 
the amendments that will be offered in this debate tomorrow, amendments 
that would extend so-called fair-share liability and establish a cap on 
noneconomic damages to all lawsuits, not just product liability suits.
  The combination of those two ideas can be lethal. When you think 
about a young person, a woman who is a homemaker who does not have 
economic losses in a lawsuit, or an elderly citizen who is on a fixed 
retirement income and who gets injured and therefore suffers no real 
economic losses other than restoration of their medical losses, when 
you consider the fact that under one of those amendments that person 
would be limited to several liability to restore their losses for 
noneconomic damages, and in addition may face a cap on those same 
damages, you get this kind of a situation. You get a situation where 
they have not covered any economic losses because they had none, but 
they have been severely damaged, perhaps incapacitated for the rest of 
their lives. They may suffer severely both pain and mental distress 
from a disability for the rest of their lives and yet maybe there is 
only one defendant standing who may be responsible for only 10 percent, 
and so they can only collect 10 percent of those damages for pain and 
suffering and disabilities.
  On top of that, an amendment would come forward to put a cap on those 
damages, so it would be 10 percent of a capped amount.
                              {time}  2200

  I would hope my friends on the other side would think very seriously 
before the combination of those two amendments are adopted. We have 
adopted a cap on noneconomic losses in our State for medical 
malpractice, but we allow joint and several liability to make sure that 
persons can collect the amount of that cap when they have suffered real 
and severe extended disabilities and pain and suffering and mental 
distress, and perhaps had no other economic losses.
  To combine the loss of joint and several liability with a cap on 
those noneconomic losses may, indeed, create some real injustice in our 
society. I would hope my friends on the other side would strongly 
consider before we adopt those two amendments in tandem.
  In short, before we extend these very valuable reforms in product 
liability to all tort law in America, we ought to think very carefully, 
and we certainly ought to think about caps and the new system of 
liability together.
  Mr. OXLEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Washington [Mr. White], one of our outstanding freshmen.
  Mr. WHITE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman, the esteemed chairman 
of one of our subcommittees, for his excellent leadership on this bill.
  I would like to say, Mr. Chairman, that as I have listened to the 
debate over the last few days, one thing struck me, the fact is nobody 
is against tort reform from President Clinton down to the lowliest, 
most junior, humble member of the freshman class in this House, 
probably me. Nobody is against legal reform. We all recognize the need 
to make these changes.
  But when the bill comes to the floor, that is the time when we have 
to separate the sheep from the goats, and I am sorry to say that now 
that the bill is 
[[Page H2883]] on the floor and now that we may actually be able to 
make some of these reforms, we now hear that we are going too far, we 
are going too fast, we need more empirical data, we need more time.
  Mr. Chairman, we have had 40 years for the citizens of this country, 
who have been crying out for the kind of reform we are hoping to adopt 
in these next few days. The time is now. We need this bill.
  Mr. Chairman, I would like to make one other point: As we listened to 
the debate, we are told that this bill is for the rich, it is for the 
corporations, it is not for the average citizen, and I suppose we are 
going to hear these themes of class warfare for the next several months 
of this Congress. But, Mr. Chairman, I do not know where these people 
have been.
  I have spent the last 2 years shaking every hand I could find in the 
First Congressional District of Washington, and I can tell you that the 
ordinary citizens in my district and probably in all of our districts 
are begging for this bill, and I will tell you the reason why. It is 
not because they have got empirical data about how many additional tort 
suits have been filed over the years, about whether there is an 
increase or a decrease. They are asking for this bill because they are 
asking this body to restore some respect for the law of our country. 
They know and we all know that every day in every court in this country 
we get results that do not make sense, that offend our sense of right 
and wrong, and they are asking for us to change that.
  Mr. Chairman, the system is out of whack. It desperately needs to be 
changed. We have an opportunity to do that now, not for the 
corporations, but for the ordinary citizens of this country, and I hope 
that every single Member of this House will vote for this bill.
  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from 
California [Mr. Berman].
  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
California [Mr. Berman].
  Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from 
California [Mr. Berman].
  The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from California [Mr. Berman] is 
recognized for 9 minutes.
  Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I thank my friend, the ranking member of 
the Committee on the Judiciary, and I particularly thank the manager 
for the Committee on Commerce, a committee which I am not on, and to 
take a position which he does not share, and so I appreciate it.
  I would like to follow up on the themes of the last couple of 
speakers. We have a product liability bill on the floor. Personally I 
do not find it a bit offensive that the Congress chooses to federalize 
the whole question of the standards for product liability. I think a 
very good case can be made for giving the manufacturers uniform rules 
around the country, it makes sense to federalize it.
  I do not even quarrel with all of the features of this bill. A 
statute of repose, which tells a manufacturer there is a certain period 
of time after which that manufacturer has procured and sold the 
product, that will pass, and he will no longer be liable for things 
that go wrong with that product unless he intentionally misrepresented 
aspects of that product that he was selling. The Bryant amendment dealt 
with that slight change in the statute of repose. He was denied a 
chance to offer that amendment. I think that can make sense.
  And I think you can talk about punitive damages in the area of 
product liability. I personally think once you have left enough 
incentive for the plaintiff to pursue the punitive damages remedy, the 
notion that he might get a million or multimillion-dollar windfall is 
wrong, and that a significant portion of that should be shared with the 
State or a nonprofit agency or a third party, because the purpose of 
punitive damages is not to make that person whole. You need enough to 
go to him to let him have the incentive to pursue it, but the purpose 
is to punish and deter future conduct, and so amendments which speak to 
that issue in a fair fashion I find acceptable.
  But there are many changes about this bill that make me curious. And 
first of all, we keep hearing talk about product liability.
  The gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Barr] in the committee offered an 
amendment, findings and purposes, to establish the Federal interest 
under the commerce clause in doing this. He withdrew that amendment, 
but the amendment reappeared in a perhaps slightly different form in 
the bill we are not voting on, and I understand that. That is in title 
I. But there is
 not even a plausible effort to provide the constitutional basis for 
the Federal Government preempting a punitive damages award when Joe 
Smith hits Bill Jones on the street, and this has historically been a 
State interest and no Federal interest. All of a sudden the punitive 
damages for that intentional tort are federalized and capped. There is 
no premise for this.

  I have talked to several constitutional law professors, Professor Van 
Alstine at Duke and others, since this bill passed out of committee. 
They think this whole section is of doubtful constitutionality, and the 
proponents of the bill do not even make an attempt to justify it on any 
constitutional ground, a little less on a policy ground, a ground that 
would say we have an interest in what New Jersey's punitive damages 
award is against sexual predators or what California says for a lawyer 
who divulges certain kinds of information or a journalist who violates 
the shield law in some fashion. These are all, and there are dozens of 
other State remedies for punitive damages for intentional torts that 
the Federal Government has no interest in, and are not a cause of any 
particular problem.
  I do not understand why this bill has a provision in here which says 
a civil action brought for commercial loss shall be governed only by 
applicable commercial or contract law. Why if the parties to a contract 
provide for four times actual damages as liquidated damages clause, 
that is OK, when the only loss is commercial, but if a person is 
injured, they are capped, and they cannot get anywhere near that 
amount. It is a funny notion to put damage to property on such a higher 
pedestal than damage to the human body.
  I guess I just want to close my comments by dealing with the comments 
really made; I thought they were somewhat cheap and tawdry comments 
made by the gentleman from Ohio that essentially impugned the motives 
of the Democrats who are opposed to this bill for why they are voting 
against this bill. Like the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Bryant], I get 
contributions from the American Trial Lawyers' Association. I get far 
more contributions from the corporate and association PAC's that 
support this legislation.
  I have no doubt that my perspective on this bill perhaps is shaped by 
the fact that I was trained in a law school. I do not think the 
gentleman from
 Illinois [Mr. Hyde] is doing this because he is in somebody's hip 
pocket or the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Bliley] or the gentleman 
from Ohio [Mr. Oxley]. I think we see the world a little bit 
differently, and that is what this whole place is supposed to be about, 
people coming from very different backgrounds. We are all affected by 
our life experiences and our careers, and we come down in different 
places, and the notion that everything comes down to who is in whose 
hip pocket debases the whole place, and while outsiders are always 
going to talk about it, the notion that people who are inside the 
process and rely on what is essentially a very cheap argument, I think, 
is not healthy to this process.

  I do not understand why the Republicans, who are against this bill, 
are they motivated by high motives, but the Democrats who are against 
this bill are motivated by low motives? I do not think anybody 
seriously believes that.
  Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BERMAN. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.
  Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I do not want to trespass on the gentleman's 
time. I agree with the gentleman. But it really cuts both ways, and I 
believe it started on the other side with our camaraderie with 
corporate America and the economic royalists and all that tone was set, 
that they were our friends and we were doing this because they were 
telling us to do it. I agree with the gentleman, let us dispense 
[[Page H2884]] with that line of argument on both sides.
  Mr. BERMAN. This does sound like another clean-hands argument, but in 
the end, four dirty hands really do not help the process.
  Mr. HYDE. I was talking about the rules. I was talking about your 
love affair with really closed rules during the entire last Congress 
and now complaining that we only gave you eight amendments this time.
  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BERMAN. I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana.
  Mr. TAUZIN. I want to commend the gentleman for that comment. It is 
time that we stopped impugning motives to either side in this debate. 
Our effort ought to be to build a good legal system. If we concentrate 
on that, perhaps the American public will appreciate this a lot better.
  Mr. BERMAN. I want to make one other point. The gentleman from 
Virginia [Mr. Bliley] several times, my friend, said that if there was 
not some interest in this, why did they kill it for 20 years? For the 
same reason the House Committee on the Judiciary did not pass a 
balanced budget amendment or a school prayer amendment or a whole 
variety of things, because the majority of the committee at that time 
did not like the bill and we did not want to vote for it, and that is 
why we killed it, and that is why it did not come out to the House 
floor. It is no big mystery. It is part of the process. We just had a 
little change now; all of a sudden certain things we never thought of 
passing are rushing out here. It is part of the process.
  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BERMAN. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.
  Mr. CONYERS. I really am impressed by this recognition that some have 
gone too far, but to tell us that we should not suggest that business 
is going to benefit, for the chairman of Judiciary to suggest we should 
also, as we are washing each other's hands, and finding that nobody is 
guilty and that we are getting contributions from everywhere, that we 
also suggest that business is not the beneficiary, the clear 
beneficiary of some of these matters. That now, I say to the gentleman 
from Illinois [Mr. Hyde] is perfectly obvious, and I am not prepared at 
this moment, while I had dirty hands on the Committee on Rules, I do 
not think I am misinforming anybody to suggest to you that the 
beneficiaries of these restrictions that are being rushed upon us are 
not the consumers but are, indeed, the business interests of this 
country.
  Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BERMAN. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.
  Mr. HYDE. I never doubted the business community will benefit from 
this legislation. I have never said otherwise. But I also do not make 
the distinction between the common working man and woman and the 
consumer and corporate America that you do. I think they each need each 
other, and when one is damaged, the other is damaged, and they should 
be working together, not at each other's throats.
  Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Georgia [Mr. Barr], a valued member of the committee.
  Mr. BARR. Mr. Chairman, I thank the distinguished chairman of the 
Committee on the Judiciary, the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde].
  I might point out to the gentleman from California [Mr. Berman] that 
the report of the committee of the House on this legislation very 
clearly indicates that the amendment that I had proposed stayed in, was 
voted on, was not withdrawn, and the language, as far as I can tell, on 
findings and purposes which appears in the report is accurate. If he 
knows otherwise, I certainly would like to know that.
  Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BARR. I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. BERMAN. I agree. It only applies to title I. It does not apply to 
title II. There is no ostensible constitutional basis for title II.
  Mr. BARR. That is fine. I appreciate the gentleman's remarks.
  During the debate here this evening, we have heard a great deal of 
talk, a great deal of sophistry, a great deal of hyperbole about who 
this legislation, if it is enacted, is going to help. Is it going to 
help corporations, companies? You bet it is. These are corporations 
that provide products for consumers. These are corporations and 
companies, small businesses that provide jobs in our communities. Will 
it help doctors? You bet it will. Will it help pregnant women? You bet 
it will.
                              {time}  2215

  When I am home, Mr. Chairman, to my district, when I am in my 
district, I am like the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Bryant]. I talk with 
real people. I do not talk with statisticians. I do not review reports. 
I do not sit down across a table from a constituent who has a problem, 
who has had to see their business go under because of the exorbitant 
costs of liability insurance. I talk with them, and I do not demand to 
see a report of how many cases there have been in court before I listen 
to their real problems.
  The real people who are harmed by our litigation system being out of 
balance are pregnant women who in my district sometimes have to drive 
an additional 30 or 40 miles to find an ob/gyn doctor because there is 
none in their communities because of the high cost, prohibitive cost, 
the prohibitive risks of being sued and not be able to get insurance. 
That is a real problem that is not a statistic. That is not something 
that may be in a report, but is a real problem involving real people 
that we are trying to help through reforming and bringing balance back 
to our system.
  When I am in my home district, when I am in Marietta, GA, and I talk 
with a small business person, and when I talk with a Cub Scout leader 
who is unable to take a group of Cub Scouts from my own neighborhood on 
a field trip because he cannot get liability insurance to take that 
group of Cub Scouts downtown, that is a real problem.
  Mr. Chairman, those are real problems.
  What we are trying to do here today, Mr. Chairman, is not to revamp, 
or reinvent, or throw out our legal system. What we are trying to do, 
Mr. Chairman, is bring it back to what it was intended to be. It was 
intended to be a system of laws and justice open to people who have 
really been hurt, not who want to look for responsibility, not in their 
own selves, but somewhere else where it should not lie. We are bringing 
balance back to a system that sorely needs balancing being brought back 
to it. We are not closing out the system. We are making it more 
responsive to the people who really need it.
  I say that, Mr. Chairman, not based on some artificial reports, 
statistic or book. I say it is based on real life problems that we see 
out in our communities.
  This is not the last word on this, Mr. Chairman. This is the 
beginning of a process. We will listen to people on the other side, 
listen to people on this side, read those reports as they are 
forthcoming to see what further changes need to be made to make sure 
the system stays in balance, but we have to start, and we should start 
with this bill.
  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
Texas [Ms. Jackson-Lee].
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman very much for 
allowing me to simply try to bypass all that has occurred maybe this 
evening in terms of whose fault, who is responsible, and really talk to 
the American people, business and consumer alike.
  I would not have spent the time in the Committee on the Judiciary 
attending to detail and working with the entire committee if I did not 
think, as the gentleman from Louisiana thought, that this is important 
business. And this business is the challenge for those of us who were 
trained as lawyers and those of us who are not to propose laws that 
will work, and, whether or not we have discussed this for some 40 years 
prior, the key is whether or not this legislation will last 40 years 
hence and that we can be assured that collectively we have designed 
legislation that responds to the concern that all of us have raised, 
the idea of fairness for the litigants who come into the courts of 
America.
   [[Page H2885]] I simply stand here to raise the concerns of women 
and children, and I dutifully attempted to work through the Committee 
on Rules to seek an opportunity to raise an amendment that I had raised 
in committee that talked about exemptions for women particularly with 
breast implant devices and, as well, children who would have a hard 
time, as the gentleman from Louisiana, and maybe a homemaker even, of 
defining or being able to project economic damages because that child 
obviously has not worked, and I ask my colleagues, ``Even though you 
might not project it, who would know that someone from an inner city 
like Houston, possibly in a place that you would not expect would turn 
out to be the rocket scientist, the President of the United States 
which doesn't get a lot of money, but therefore would, of course, have 
the future to earn a certain degree of money that is not projected for 
that individual?''
  But how can I tell Marilyn, who is a loving grandmother in my 
community, the hometown of Houston, whose faulty silicon breast 
implants have caused her total disability and agony, that she would be 
limited in recovery? What about Marilyn's daughter, Theresa, also who 
suffers from severe neurological disorders that have been passed on to 
her by her mother? And what about Theresa who has breast fed her three 
children, and that is Marilyn's 5-year-old granddaughter is now showing 
symptoms of silicon poisoning, too?
  My question, as the gentleman from Louisiana raised, is why we could 
not come together and deal with issues to respond to the concerns of 
those who would want to put legislation forward that would last 40 
years into the future.
  I believe this is not a bashing game because I know, as a former 
corporate lawyer, that a vast majority of American companies want to do 
what is right. America's manufacturers have tended to be the very best 
in the world. They can improve further as we move into the 21st 
century, but, when we have some 80-some amendments offered in good 
faith, I would hope, and I realize the Committee on Rules has to work 
in fairness, and then, out of that, the opportunity to discuss breast 
implant device?
  And then we wind up with eight that does not take into consideration, 
if my colleagues will, the concerns of children and the inability to 
measure their economic damages and, of course, women who may be having 
an ongoing problem with devices like breast implant devices.
  I think that we are not coming to the table to address this in the 
fullest measure that we possibly could, and so I think the challenge we 
have, noting that there are two amendments that were not in any 
committee, as far as I understand, and now attempting to cap 
noneconomic damages, that we have the question raised by the honorable 
gentleman from New Mexico about preemption and whether or not this law 
will now intrude into the many States across the Nation who are working 
in good intention to develop tort reform and to do it well according to 
their State needs, and then, lastly, would we be able to find out for 
sure as to whether or not the new device of punitive damages standard 
and the applicability to all civil liability, or civil litigation, is, 
in fact, fair and is, in fact, responsive to business and consumers 
alike.
  Let me conclude, Mr. Chairman, by simply saying, ``What about a 
bifurcated bill that would have worked for businesses in America? Why 
not do a bill that really works for Americans and is fair?''
  Mr. OXLEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.
  Mr. Chairman, I was struck with the discussion we have had this 
evening and hark back to our hearing on the product liability issue in 
which the representative trial lawyers testified that they were, of 
course, opposed to Federal legislation in this area. I reminded him of 
the time when in Ohio, not too many years ago, the Ohio trial lawyers 
appeared in testimony before the Ohio General Assembly and said that 
they felt that it was the province of the Federal Government to deal 
with a national problem like products liability, and indeed the States, 
if they were to pass 50 different statutes, would be a hodgepodge that 
would never solve the problem.
  It seems to me a rather interesting dichotomy that we hope to address 
in this Federal legislation. It is imperative, it seems to me, based on 
what we have heard in the committee, in the committee of the gentleman 
from Illinois [Mr. Hyde], to really provide a national standard for 
those goods that are sold in interstate commerce, and indeed over 70 
percent of the goods that are manufactured in this country are sold in 
interstate commerce.
  And so it behooves us in the Congress to set those Federal standards, 
and that is exactly what we propose to do in this particular piece of 
legislation, and I would urge that my colleagues do likewise.
  Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the 
gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Watt].
  Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I think the gentleman from 
Michigan [Mr. Conyers] has yielded me such time as I may consume 
because I have gotten the reputation for talking a long time, but I 
want to surprise people tonight. I know it is late, and I want to make 
three concise points and sit down.
  I think this has been a good debate, not long enough to do justice to 
this issue, but certainly a good debate.
  The first point I want to make, Mr. Chairman, is that this bill is 
referred to by my colleagues as the Common Sense Legal Reform Act, and 
I have seen it go through the process over time through the Committee 
on the Judiciary, and I suspect tomorrow and the next day on the floor 
it will cease to be a Common Sense Legal Reform Act and become a 
Nonsense Legal Reform Act. I think it is nonsense because it is 
contrary to everything I had thought my Republican colleagues stood for 
in their Contract With America.
  I thought they believed in States rights, but here I find in this 
bill that we are preempting all State law on punitive damages on 
products liability, and tomorrow an amendment will be offered to 
preempt State law in a number of other areas that have been 
traditionally reserved to the States, and I will remind my colleagues 
that the folks at the State level cannot want conservatives telling 
them what their values are and imposing their values on them any more 
than they want liberals doing that.
  I thought my colleagues believed in not mandating things to the 
States. But in this bill, after they have preempted State law on 
punitive damages, preempted State law even on the burden of proof, 
which is a procedural issue, I would submit to my colleagues, they have 
turned around at the end of the bill and said, ``We deny you the right 
to the Federal courts even though we have set the standards by which 
you must comply.''
  So I am scratching my head a little bit and wondering if that is not 
a Federal mandate, then what is?
  The second point I want to make is that the chairman of the Committee 
on the Judiciary, for whom I have the utmost respect, said in general 
debate earlier that we have the most costly legal system in the world.

                              {time}  2230
  I want my colleagues and the American people to know that not only do 
we have the most costly legal system in the world, but we have the 
very, very best legal system in the world; we are the envy of the 
world. Our jury system is something that every person around the world 
will tell you works, and despite that, with $6 trillion in GNP, we 
spend less than 1 percent resolving all of the disputes that take place 
on this issue. All of our disputes, we spend less than 1 percent.
  So I do not think we can take this as a justification for the massive 
revisions that we are undertaking. The justification, it seems to me, 
is that we are hurting little people at the same time that we are 
protecting and upping the standards and protections for wealthy people, 
and that leads me to the third point that I want to make, and by far 
the most serious point that I will make on this bill. I raise the 
question with my colleagues, what will the people do when they cannot 
get justice in the courts? What is their alternative when there is no 
justice in the courts?

[[Page H2886]]

  I want my colleagues to contemplate this issue. People go to court 
because they feel vigorously about issues. You deprive them of that 
right, it does not do away with the vigor with which they approach 
these issues. It just means they must direct it in some other way. They 
must seek their justice in the streets. We used to, I understand, dual 
and take out our guns and shoot each other. Heaven forbid if we ever 
get back to that kind of system.
  I will close and tell you that I am deeply troubled by the direction 
of this bill, and I hope that there will be a process for making it 
better, but it will not happen.
  Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to a valued 
member of the committee, the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. 
Inglis].
  Mr. INGLIS of South Carolina. I thank the gentleman from Illinois for 
yielding.
  I rise tonight in strong support of this legislation and really to 
make two points. One is a story, and then second, what I believe to be 
the bottom line of this whole discussion, but the story first.
  There is a plant in my district that makes food processing equipment. 
It is a very successful company that makes very fine food equipment, 
processing equipment that can grind meat and do all kinds of things 
like that, high-quality, highly skilled work that is done by very 
trained people.
  Early in my campaign for the Congress of 1992 I visited that plant, 
and the owner took me on a tour, and he showed me this very 
sophisticated equipment they can build, and he told me that actually 
the growth of his business is out of that and into pizza delivery boxes 
for export to Mexico. The reason, he says, it is a growth industry in 
Mexico, apparently pizza is selling well in Mexico, but also he cannot 
afford the liability insurance associated with that food processing 
equipment. He can no longer afford the multiple lawsuits that are filed 
against his company, particularly when people alter the product, take 
off the warnings, and sue him many years later for a product long ago 
forgotten by his company.
  I would submit to my colleagues that that is happening all across 
this country, and if we want to move out of high-technology, truly 
specialized equipment, highly sophisticated equipment like this food 
processing equipment and into making pizza boxes, I guess that is all 
right, but I think that is the wrong direction to go. We should 
encourage these manufacturers to make these very skilled products.
  The second observation I would make is really the bottom line of all 
of this, is whether we are a nation that is going to focus on 
responsibilities and not just rights, and that is really what it boils 
down to. In this debate, what you are going to hear is a whole lot of 
discussion about how somebody else is responsible for my actions, 
somebody else is a guarantor of my health and happiness and that really 
is not the case.
  Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Kansas [Mr. Tiahrt].
  Mr. TIAHRT. I thank the gentleman from Illinois for yielding me the 
time.
  I just want to speak in support of this, Mr. Chairman, because of the 
impact that has happened in my district, because of the statute of 
repose or the produce liability for airplanes. In Independence, KS, in 
April, we are going to break ground for a new plant. Cessna Aircraft is 
going to build a plant and bring 1,000 jobs into Independence, KS, the 
Montgomery County area. There will be another 1,000 jobs that are going 
to be started in Wichita. The spin-off is going to create 7,000 jobs 
because of product liability for aircraft.
  I heard earlier that we were concerned because there was no 
measurable impact from product liability, that there were no benefits 
that could be created from such limitations, that it was only going to 
hamper individuals, but I am here to tell you tonight that in my 
district of south central Kansas, we are going to see 7,000 jobs over 
the next 5 years. And we are excited about that.
  The industry tells us that there may be a possibility of 25,000 jobs 
nationwide from product liability on aircraft. Now, if we expand that 
beyond aircraft, if we go into other products, we are going to see that 
there will be jobs created. But there will be people working, and it is 
not the rich people or the corporations that are going to benefit. It 
is the guy that carries a lunch bucket to work. It is the guy that 
tries to create a safe environment for his kids, he tries to clothe 
them and to feed them. Those are the people we are benefiting by 
product liability.
  Mr. Chairman, I just want to consider this legislation, pass it out 
of here in a quick manner, because it is good for the working people of 
America.
  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Chairman, I yield my remaining 5 minutes to the 
gentleman from Oklahoma [Mr. Brewster].
  (Mr. BREWSTER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. BREWSTER. Mr. Chairman, I rise this evening in support of H.R. 
956 and will offer an amendment with my colleagues Messrs. Oxley, 
Coburn, Burr, Tauzin, and Stenholm.
  The enactment of this amendment simply exempts the manufacturer or 
seller of drugs or medical devices which are FDA approved, from 
punitive damages.
  It is important to note that this amendment does not limit actual or 
noneconomic damages. But, ensures that companies who have acted in 
good-faith and received FDA approval will not be hit with punitive 
damages. When this amendment becomes law, lives will be saved.
  This country has the most rigorous drug and medical device approval 
process in the world. Companies which research and develop new 
treatments spend millions, and sometimes billions, of dollars on 
developing and testing new treatments in order to meet FDA standards of 
approval and make these important treatments available to the public.
  The out-of-control tort situation in our country is forcing companies 
to back away from developing and putting on the market many important 
new treatments related to illnesses such as cancer and AIDS. This 
amendment would, to a great extent, remedy this situation.
  Mr. Chairman, I would like to make a few remarks on the bill itself. 
I support final passage of H.R. 956. This bill will establish a unified 
set of standards and procedures for product liability and civil 
litigation.
  The vast array of product liability laws that face manufacturers, 
businesses, and consumers have suppressed entrepreneurial creativity 
for fear of frivolous lawsuits.
  H.R. 956 will result in predictable and marketable policies to 
consumers and manufacturers, and enhance job creation and innovation. I 
encourage my fellow Members on both sides of the aisle to vote in favor 
of the Oxley amendment and final passage of this critical legislation.
  Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield such time as he may 
consume to the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Ramstad], who is chairman 
of a task force on the subject of product liability.
  Mr. RAMSTAD. I thank the distinguished chairman for yielding me the 
time, and, Mr. Chairman, as one who chaired the task force which 
drafted H.R. 10, the Common Sense Legal Reform Act, I rise in strong 
support of this legislation which derived from that initial 
legislation.
  I want to commend the respective chairmen of the Committees on the 
Judiciary and Commerce for ensuring that we honor our pledge to the 
American people to bring this legislation to the full House for a vote 
within the first 100 days.
  Chairman Hyde, Chairman Bliley, and Chairman Oxley deserve a lot of 
credit for their work, as well as their members.
  Now, I recognize, Mr. Chairman, that some Members who support tort 
reform are genuinely concerned about the Federalism issue; that is, 
whether the issue of tort reform should be left to the States.
  Members with this concern, I believe, should find instructive the 
counsel of three sources: Judge Robert Bork, State Representative Steve 
Flowers and last but not least, the American people.
   [[Page H2887]] First, Judge Bork is certainly no fan of an expansive 
reading of the commerce clause, but he readily concludes that these 
reforms are well within the scope of Congress's authority under the 
commerce clause. I want to quote from a letter dated February 27 to the 
Speaker in which Judge Bork concludes that Federal intervention for 
this purpose is not merely constitutionally permissible. It is very 
important to vindicate the Framer's constitutional design. Judge Bork's 
basic argument is that it can no longer be disputed that abusive 
litigation is having a profoundly adverse impact on interstate 
commerce.
  It is, therefore, necessary for Congress to protect interstate 
commerce from parochial discriminatory regulation by States and 
localities.
  Also, Members should pay particular attention to State Representative 
Steve Flowers of Alabama. Representative Flowers once believed that 
tort reform should be left to the States, but not now. Why?
  In 1993, the Alabama State supreme court ruled that the State 
legislature does not have the authority to impose any cap on punitive 
damages and struck down the tort reform law that Representative Flowers 
had authored back in 1987. Even George McGovern in the Washington Post, 
and most Members, I am sure, agree we
 should cap punitive damages. Since the Alabama's supreme court's 
decision, Alabama's punitive damage awards have gone through the roof. 
Forbes magazine recently described Alabama as, ``the worst place in 
America in which to be a civil defendant.''

  Finally, Mr. Chairman, the American people understand the need for 
uniformity of liability laws. In a recent survey of 1,000 adults, 84 
percent--I mean, 84 percent of the people don't agree whether it is a 
nice day or not, what the weather is like--but 84 percent of the people 
agree that because State liability laws often conflict with each other 
and because so many lawsuits cross State lines, there should be one set 
of rules for the liability system instead of 50 different sets of 
rules.
  Mr. Chairman, I hope this addresses the concerns of my colleagues 
regarding Federalism. We must address these national problems, Mr. 
Chairman, with a national solution and that national solution lies in 
the legislation brought here tonight. And I urge its support tomorrow.
  Mr. BERMAN. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. RAMSTAD. I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I am curious. First of all, was title II of 
this bill, the preemption of punitive damages in nonproduct liability 
cases, part of the Republican contract that you were involved in 
drafting?

                              {time}  2245

  Mr. RAMSTAD. Mr. Chairman, it was certainly thought if it applied, 
the limitation on punitive damages applied to products cases, it should 
apply to all civil actions.
  Mr. BERMAN. Was that in the contract?
  Mr. RAMSTAD. The cap on punitive damages was in the contract.
  Mr. BERMAN. Was the cap in non-product liabilities cases? Because I 
think the contract was only limited to caps on punitive damages in 
product liability cases.
  Mr. RAMSTAD. The present bill I am sure the gentleman recognizes 
applies to all civil actions, as it properly should.
  Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, the current system of product 
liability law in the United States is detrimental to our Nation's 
economic prosperity. The cost of insurance and litigation causes 
manufacturers to increase prices, provides a disincentive for business 
to create new products, and impedes interstate commerce. Tort liability 
costs are substantially higher in the United States than any other 
country and currently represent 2.3 percent of U.S. gross domestic 
product.
  For the past 20 years, the Democrat-controlled Congress has refused 
to seriously consider obvious problems inherent in our product 
liability laws. I am pleased that the new Republican majority has made 
product liability reform a priority and I enthusiastically support H.R. 
956, The Common Sense Product Liability and Legal Reform Act.
  H.R. 956 will enact several important reforms. It ensures that 
product sellers will receive reasonable protection against liability 
for manufacturer error. A plaintiff whose use of drugs or alcohol is 
partly responsible for an accident will be prohibited from collecting 
damages from defendants with lesser degrees of responsibility. Limits 
are established regarding a defendant's liability for non-economic 
damages to a proportionate share of responsibility. A 15-year 
limitation for brining most liability actions will also be enacted. The 
bill also makes important reforms to the system of awarding punitive 
damages. It addresses burden of proof, proportionality of awards, and 
bifurcation of proceedings.
  In addition, I support the Cox amendment to H.R. 956 which expands 
the legislation to include reform of the medical malpractice system. 
Congress has spent a great deal of time debating elaborate proposals 
that would control skyrocketing medical costs. This amendment provides 
a simple first step to reducing the cost of medical care. In my State, 
Wisconsin, the average physician pays $40,000 a year in medical 
malpractice insurance premiums, and specialists pay more. If you assume 
that the average doctor works 2,000 billable hours per year and charges 
$20 per hour, then the first $10, or the average cost of the first 
half-hour of the office visit, is the patient's share of the medical 
malpractice insurance premium. Medical malpractice premiums have been 
the fastest growing component of physician's costs. This amendment will 
reduce frivolous malpractice suits and the corresponding increases in 
insurance premiums. In my opinion, reforming medical malpractice is an 
essential start to reforming America's health care system.
  In the coming months, Congress will debate significant cuts in 
Government spending for research and development, small business 
programs, and export promotion. Enactment of this legislation will 
reduce tort liability costs for American companies and enhance American 
competitiveness in the world marketplace.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I am very distressed about some of the 
proposals that have been considered and passed by the House recently. 
Although one in three Americans will get cancer and one in four of us 
will die from it, the proposals we have been passing under the Contract 
With America are making it substantially easier for big corporations to 
pollute our environment and bodies with toxic chemicals with complete 
immunity. They make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the 
Federal Government to protect the public health and take away the 
financial incentives for private industry to use care when 
manufacturing products.
  Forces who think its appropriate to ignore the public health 
successfully defeated important amendments I offered to the unfunded 
mandates reform and the regulatory moratorium bills which would have 
allowed the Federal Government to protect the public health--especially 
from cancer-causing toxic exposures. On Monday, under the guise of 
attorney accountability, these same forces successfully passed a 
provision that would make it extremely difficult to win a suit against 
a company that manufactures products that cause toxic injuries. It will 
likely prohibit evidence of newly discovered injuries that we are 
discovering in the toxic tort area like chemical sensitivity and immune 
deficiency syndrome. Obviously, attorney accountability only demands 
accountability to corporate interests and not accountability to the 
consumer.
  But those of us who want to protect the public health are beginning 
to win the fight. This legal reform bill was amended so consumers 
harmed by toxic products like the Dalcon shield, DES, breast implants, 
and asbestos, can sue for compensatory damages. The bill does not allow 
suits 15 years after purchase of the product. Yet, in committee the 
time limit provision was changed to exclude injuries that do not 
ordinarily appear within 15 years of exposure. Although this provision 
addresses latent injuries like cancer and asbestosis, it is badly 
written and could leave many seriously injured consumers without legal 
recourse. Which injuries ordinarily appear more than 15 years after 
exposure? Which types of cancer? How about AIDS? And chemical 
sensitivity? What if an injury usually arises within 10 years, what 
happens to the victims who were lucky enough to have a longer latency 
period? Will they not be able to sue? Clearly this bill does not 
adequately protect consumers from cancer-causing and other toxic 
products.
  Mr. Chairman, there is one other serious flaw in this bill I would 
like to address. It is extremely regressive. The cap on punitive 
damages is based, in part, on the victim's income. Not only does this 
allow wealthier victims to win larger recoveries, but it also creates 
an incentive to use less care when developing and manufacturing 
products that are typically used by low-income consumers.
  This bill is a badly written bill that puts consumers' rights in 
serious jeopardy and I strongly urge you to vote ``no'' on final 
passage.
  Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
  [[Page H2888]] Mr. OXLEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of 
my time.
  The CHAIRMAN. All time has expired for general debate.
  Under the rule, the Committee rises.
  Accordingly, the Committee rose; and the Speaker pro tempore (Mr. 
Dickey) having assumed the chair, Mr. Dreier, Chairman of the Committee 
of the Whole House on the State of the Union, reported that that 
Committee, having had under consideration the bill, (H.R. 956) to 
establish legal standards and procedures for product liability 
litigation, and for other purposes, had come to no resolution thereon.

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