Howard Berman: “the debate which preceded the introduction of the amendment by the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. McHale] discussed…”

“the debate which preceded the introduction of the amendment by the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. McHale] discussed the unwillingness of the proponents to have their language meet their rhetoric, to deal with the non-meritorious frivolous claims. The gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. McHale] has come up with an amendment which seeks to do that. White I have some concerns about the entire structure of the amendment and to what extent it moves in place of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure or might have other provisions which are inconsistent with rule XI, the fact is the amendment of the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. McHale] does deal with the rhetorical arguments in favor of the sponsors, that the sponsors of this bill have been using. Therefore, I thought the appropriate thing to do in this case was offer an amendment which simply makes the McHale amendment to deal with actions in the case of frivolous lawsuits the core of this bill. Let us, if we want to address the issue of frivolous cases, an explosion of frivolous cases, the cases which have no merit and the ability of the court to deal with that effectively, let us not punish the poor plaintiff, let us not punish the plaintiff who has a decent case and believes in good faith that he or she can win that case.”