JOHN LINDER: “First, Mr. Speaker, let me address the question of closed rules that keeps coming up from the Democrat side. Not to…”

“First, Mr. Speaker, let me address the question of closed rules that keeps coming up from the Democrat side. Not to sound too remedial, but the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Frost] made it clear that the only reference in the contract was to full and open debate, not open rules. The only open rule promised in the contract was on the term limits bill, and it will be open. The ceilings of $250,000 for punitive damages will tend to be floors in the long run. But that is not the way most of these cases are settled. The bill also provides for three times economic losses. Judge Griffin Bell, the former Attorney General, was in my office 1 week ago and said that a case he represented, the famous case of a $100 million settlement from General Motors, with this bill, would have been a $6 million settlement, which is about what the family is going to get anyway. To address a final point about States rights, the gentleman from New York made the case that we are taking away from the States. However, his mayor in a letter to the editor of the New York Times, after pointing out that a jury awarded $18 million to an 18-year-old student who decided to see if he could leap over a volleyball net in gym class and wound up a quadriplegic, awarded $4.3 million to a convicted felon who was caught mugging a 71-year-old. As the thief fled, a transit policeman shot him, leaving him paralyzed. The mugger sued and won.”