William Tauzin: “let me point out that this notion of fresh look is already in the law. The notion of fresh look is already in the law.…”

“let me point out that this notion of fresh look is already in the law. The notion of fresh look is already in the law. It is a remedy that already exists for the parties. If they think they have a contract that was entered into where they did not really have a choice, like some of these proponents of the bill have pointed out, then they can go to the FCC, go to court and have that contract abrogated. They can do that today. In fact, as I said, PanAmSat tried. PanAmSat is a private satellite corporation owned by Hughes Satellite. They went to court and argued that some of the contracts that COMSAT had signed were in fact entitled to a fresh look. The court threw them out on summary judgment. They did not even have a trial. The court threw them out on summary judgment and said, ``There are no facts here to indicate that your contracts ought to be abrogated. In fact if you signed it, you ought to live by it and you ought to honor it.'' Why should we in this Congress overturn that court now and say it is okay for people to get out of their contracts? Did they have other choices? Yes. The court so ruled that they actually rejected other choices before signing up with COMSAT. Did they sign it willfully for their own reasons? The court so ruled. Were there other companies they could have gone to?…”