Phil Gingrey: “Well, yes, and of course, the good judge certainly knows this. I am sure he has seen it in his courtroom many times. But…”

“Well, yes, and of course, the good judge certainly knows this. I am sure he has seen it in his courtroom many times. But the issue that is brought up a lot of times is, well, gosh, you are about to take away an injured person's right to a redress of their grievances; you are going to take away their day in court. That is absolutely not true, and I am so glad that the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murphy) brought that to our attention. We are talking about in the major provision of this bill, which is patterned, modeled after the California bill on tort reform in the late 1970s that stabilized the market and health care delivery system in that State, is a cap on so-called pain and suffering awards or what we call noneconomic, at some figure. In our bill, it is $250,000. Some States have addressed that, and maybe it is $350,000. In some instances, if there are more than one defendant in a case, and I can tell my colleagues and I know my two colleagues here with me this evening know this, but in almost every case there are multiple defendants. So let us say the cap on noneconomic was $350,000, and you had two or three defendants, then that award in itself, not counting any economic damages, is over $1 million dollar.”