Ed Markey: “the ostensible justification for moving this legislation today is that our criminal justice system is overcrowded…”

“the ostensible justification for moving this legislation today is that our criminal justice system is overcrowded, sluggish, excessively costly. We have to do something about it. And if this bill did anything about it, I think that we could give some praise to the Republican Party. However, what they have done here is avoid the real litigation explosion in our country. Product liability cases constitute only about 2 percent of all lawsuits filed in State courts and only about 3 percent of all civil jury trials. By comparison, 48 percent of the civil lawsuits filed in State courts and 18 percent of all the cases tried are disputes between businesses. These business-versus-business lawsuits accounted for 63 percent of the lawsuits since 1989 which resulted in a verdict or a settlement exceeding $50 million. So what has the conference report done on these lawsuits? Absolutely nothing. The Committee on Rules would not even allow me to bring an amendment out here on the floor on this blight upon the law system of our country. The conference report actually contains provisions that explicitly exempt all civil actions brought for commercial lawsuits from any of the harsh new procedural substantive provisions in the bill. Let us just consider some of the cases they do not want to deal with. McDonald's brought a temporary restraining order to prevent Burger King from airing ads comparing the Big Mac unfavorably with the Whopper.”