[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 155 (Friday, December 15, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H12513-H12514]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MULTIDISTRICT LITIGATION ACT OF 2000
Mr. McCOLLUM. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee
on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of the bill
(H.R. 5562) to amend title 28, United States Code, to allow a judge to
whom a case is transferred to retain jurisdiction over certain
multidistrict litigation cases for trial, and ask for its immediate
consideration in the House.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from Florida?
Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I yield to the
gentleman to explain the bill and his proposed amendment.
Mr. McCOLLUM. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, the bill that is under consideration is derived from the
base text of section 2 of H.R. 2112, which the House passed by voice
vote under suspension of the rules on September 13, 1999. I should
therefore note that the relevant legislative history of H.R. 2112,
section 2, as set forth in House Report 106-276, serves as a
legislative history for H.R. 5562.
H.R. 5562 responds to a 1998 Supreme Court decision pertaining to
multidistrict litigation, the so-called Lexecon case. The bill would
simply amend the multidistrict litigation statute by explicitly
allowing a transferee court to retain jurisdiction over referred cases
for trial for the purposes of determining liability and punitive
damages, or to refer them to other districts as it sees fit.
Compensatory damages would still be determined by the State or Federal
referral courts pursuant to compromise language developed by the
gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner) and the gentleman from
California (Mr. Berman). The legislation is wholly consistent with past
judicial practice of nearly 30 years under the multidistrict litigation
statute.
This legislation obviously promotes judicial administrative
efficiency without compromising the rights of litigants and their
counsel to due process and appropriate compensation. It is strongly
endorsed by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. I urge my
colleagues to support it as well.
As a final point, Mr. Speaker, I will shortly offer a technical
amendment to the bill based on an observation by counsel for the
ranking member. H.R. 5562 as introduced inadvertently references a
nonexistent subsection of title 28 of the U.S. Code. The amendment
simply strikes this reference.
I might add that this is the last bill that I will get to manage or
comment on in this body while I am a Member of Congress. I have enjoyed
again working with the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott). It has been
a great privilege to be a Member of the House, and it has been a great
privilege to have been chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime of the
Committee on the Judiciary during this Congress. And during the last 20
years it has been a great honor to be here.
Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Speaker, under my reservation, I would want to express
my appreciation as I did the last time we were here with what we
thought was the last piece of legislation that we would be considering.
The gentleman and I have worked together on the Subcommittee on Crime.
I have enjoyed that work. We worked in a bipartisan way. Even when we
did not agree, we were able to constructively work and try to come to
as much consensus as we could. I wish the gentleman from Florida well
in the future. Again, I want to express my appreciation for the way we
were able to work together.
Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I wish to express my support for H.R. 5562.
H.R. 5562 consists of Section 2 of H.R. 2112, which the House passed
by voice vote under suspension of the rules on September 13, 1999.
Previously, on July 27, 1999 and also by a voice vote, the Committee on
the Judiciary favorably reported H.R. 2112, including language
identical to H.R. 5562. On June 16, 1999, the House Judiciary
Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property held a hearing on H.R.
2112, and Section 2, on which H.R. 5562 is based, was fully vetted and
discussed. Therefore, in essence, the House has already fully
considered H.R. 5562, found it non-controversial, and passed it.
H.R. 5562 has a very narrow purpose and effect--it would overturn the
1998 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Lexecon v. Milberg Weiss.
The Lexecon decision held that a multidistrict litigation transferred
to a federal court for pretrial proceedings under Section 1407 of the
Judicial Code cannot be retained by that court for trial purposes under
Section 1404(a). In so holding, the Lexecon decision upset decades of
practice by the Multidistrict Litigation Panel and federal district
courts. The Lexecon decision also increases the cost and complexity of
such multidistrict litigations by requiring courts other than the
transferee court, which has overseen discovery and other pretrial
proceedings, to conduct the trial.
H.R. 5562 overturns the Lexecon decision in a carefully calibrated
manner. While H.R. 5562 allows a transferee court to retain a case for
trial on liability issues and, when appropriate, on punitive damages,
it creates a presumption that the trial of compensatory damages will be
remanded to the transferor court. In so doing, H.R. 5562 is careful to
overturn the Lexecon decision without expanding the power previously
exercised by transferee courts. More importantly, the presumption
regarding the trial of compensatory damages ensures that plaintiffs
will not be unduly burdened in pursuit of their claims.
Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from Florida?
There was no objection.
The Clerk read the bill, as follows:
H.R. 5562
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``Multidistrict Litigation Act
of 2000''.
SEC. 2. MULTIDISTRICT LITIGATION.
Section 1407 of title 28, United States Code, is amended--
(1) in the third sentence of subsection (a), by inserting
``or ordered transferred to the transferee or other district
under subsection (i)'' after ``terminated''; and
(2) by adding at the end the following new subsection:
``(i)(1) Subject to paragraph (2) and except as provided in
subsection (j), any action transferred under this section by
the panel may be transferred for trial purposes, by the judge
or judges of the transferee district to whom the action was
assigned, to the transferee or other district in the interest
of justice and for the convenience of the parties and
witnesses.
``(2) Any action transferred for trial purposes under
paragraph (1) shall be remanded by the panel for the
determination of compensatory damages to the district court
from which it was transferred, unless the court to which the
action has been transferred for trial purposes also finds,
for the convenience of the parties and witnesses and in the
interests of justice, that the action should be retained for
the determination of compensatory damages.''.
SEC. 3. EFFECTIVE DATE.
The amendments made by section 2 shall apply to any civil
action pending on or brought on or after the date of the
enactment of this Act.
Amendment Offered by Mr. MC COLLUM
Mr. McCOLLUM. Mr. Speaker, I offer an amendment.
The Clerk read as follows:
Amendment offered by Mr. McCollum:
Page 2, lines 7 and 8, strike ``and except as provided in
subsection (j)''.
Mr. McCOLLUM (during the reading). Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous
consent that the amendment be considered as read and printed in the
Record.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from Florida?
There was no objection.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the amendment offered by
the gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum).
The amendment was agreed to.
[[Page H12514]]
The bill was ordered to be engrossed and read a third time, was read
the third time, and passed, and a motion to reconsider was laid on the
table.
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