Political Quotes

“Very briefly, the essence of this comes down to this, because this is very complicated. How does this work? It is a State court judge that has to make this determination as to whether or not these individual suits get consolidated. It is not a Federal judge; it is a State court judge. Obviously, a State court judge has broad discretion in making that determination. Even if he does do that, if an individual feels he does not belong in that grouping--obviously, we are trying to avoid a case where there are 50 or more individual actions that effectively operate as a single action, which would thus gut the bill and the uniform way in which we are attempting to deal with litigation issues. As I said, the decision to consolidate these individual actions must be with a State court judge, and then if the individual feels as though they really don't belong in that case, the State court judge has broad discretion to take that individual out. There are a lot of protections here. This is not heavy handed at all. It is a way to try and avoid exactly creating new loopholes where plaintiffs seek to consolidate individual cases and thus evade the provisions of this legislation. But that decision is the State court judges' decision and to their broad discretion. And secondly, the individual has the opportunity to go to that State court judge and make the case that they don't really belong in that class action.”