John Rice Carter: “reclaiming my time. And I once again thank my colleague from Texas (Mr. Burgess) for being here with me tonight. I rose…”

“reclaiming my time. And I once again thank my colleague from Texas (Mr. Burgess) for being here with me tonight. I rose when I first started talking to tell you that there is, in my opinion, an attitude crisis for the justice system in America. We have talked about medical malpractice, and we have gone forward on the crusade. And I think we are getting some results. And the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess) has very clearly described how we are seeing those results in the State of Texas today. Hopefully, with the work this Congress will do, we will be able to find that same success in the area of dealing with medical issues in the courthouse, to put more fairness back in the system; and that our class action reform, I think, is putting fairness back in the system. But it is a bigger picture than that, Mr. Speaker. There are a lot of issues we really need to talk about as we talk about lawsuit reform in America. One of the real tragedies that you see in the courthouse today is people using our courts, not to redress grievances, but as a battering ram of costs to destroy competition with those that they are in business in competition against, or using it to try to change, make somebody do something they do not want to do by costing them enough medical costs, I mean, lawyer costs they cannot afford to go to court. So you just continue to file lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit, many of which could be frivolous; but you must defend yourself.…”