Chris Dodd: “I pointed out the other day that back in the fall of 2003--I believe in October--a group of us who objected to the…”

“I pointed out the other day that back in the fall of 2003--I believe in October--a group of us who objected to the cloture motion and provided the margin of difference that day from invoking cloture provided the necessary votes to secure passage of the then as written class action reform bill. I think we were right in doing so. That bill, I believe, was excessive. There was a real danger it would have undone a lot of good law in this country which made courts accessible to legitimate class action plaintiffs. We were asked, a small group of us who were willing to work on this issue, to try to come up with some compromises, and we did. We submitted a letter to the majority leader saying there were four items that we thought needed to be addressed in that bill. We then sat down and negotiated not only the 4 items but 8 items additional to the 4, so we came back with 12 improvements to that bill, far more than we were asked to do by those concerned with legislation.”