Political Quotes

“Let me give a factual example to make the case. Assume you have two identical computer systems, system A and system B, sold by the same manufacturer. They prove to be defective and cause economic damages of $100 million and lost profits to each purchaser, A and B. System A crashed because of defective wiring, while system B crashed because of the Y2K bug. If Congress enacts the proposal suggested by my colleague from Massachusetts, that would allow no recovery of economic damages in tort cases. Purchaser B in the example would be able to sue for economic losses under the Y2K legislation while purchaser A would not. There is no justification for such a result. In effect, the net result of the Y2K bill would be to expand liability in Y2K cases. Indeed, it would create an incentive for plaintiff's lawyers to look for any Y2K problem and then make that the predicate for legislation, exactly the opposite of the policy aim of the legislation. In the faulty wire case, you only get economic damages and you have to apply State law. Under the Y2K legislation as proposed by my colleague from Massachusetts, you are expanding this. We are not trying to expand law here; we are trying to at least follow a similar pattern. So there is a fundamental difference: the defective wire in one case, the defective Y2K problem in the other.”