[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 16 (Tuesday, February 15, 2005)]
[House]
[Page H589]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          CLASS ACTION REFORM

  Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, this week the House will take the first step 
of the new Congress towards fulfilling our mandate to reform America's 
legal system, which for decades has been too often and too easily gamed 
by predatory self-serving personal injury lawyers.
  Last week, the Senate passed the Class Action Fairness Act, 
legislation essentially identical to a bill passed by the House in 
recent years. This week, we will take it up and pass it again, and send 
it, along with the final product, to the President for his signature.
  This first step, Mr. Speaker, is a giant leap. For the first time in 
years, the power of trial lawyers to abuse our generous and open legal 
system will be checked by ensuring that class action lawsuits are both 
valid and designed to protect victims, not line lawyers' pockets.
  It first requires that large interstate class actions be filed in 
Federal court to streamline the process and make sure that lawyers 
cannot shop around for the most historically generous State venues.
  It puts an end to other tricks certain lawyers use to keep their 
cases out of Federal court. And it establishes a consumer class action 
bill of rights that ensures it is the plaintiffs and not just the 
lawyers who benefit from legitimate class action suits.
  This last provision will prevent a repeat of the Shields et al v. 
Bridgestone/Firestone case in which the plaintiffs got nothing, but 
their lawyers got $19 million, or of the Microsoft antitrust litigation 
in which consumers received 5 to $10 in voucher coupons, while 
attorneys billed hundreds of millions of dollars in fees.
  This is a pattern of abuse, Mr. Speaker, greed rewarded on a 
breathtaking scale by a legal system in desperate need of protection. 
Class action fairness is not just reform; it is self-defense. After 
all, our courts are not home to a legal system but a system of justice, 
justice too long denied American plaintiffs and defendants.
  Consumers and businesses alike have been victimized by lawsuit abuse, 
court dockets are backed up, companies are paying lawyers instead of 
employees, and our economy is suffering for it all.
  With the Class Action Fairness Act, Congress will begin the work of 
restoring common sense and common decency to our legal justice system, 
according to the needs of American families and the principles of 
reform they endorsed in last November's historic election. The 109th 
Congress has a mandate for reform, Mr. Speaker, and this week we will 
send the President the first product of that mandate.

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