John Kerry: “The Progressive Policy Institute of the Democratic Leadership Counsel says: Despite the number of lawsuits avoided…”

“The Progressive Policy Institute of the Democratic Leadership Counsel says: Despite the number of lawsuits avoided during a 90-day cure period, or the number of disputes settled through ADR, the cost of Y2K litigation will remain exorbitantly high as long as opportunities remain for people to abuse our legal system. However, there are a number of Y2K-specific reforms that can be enacted to curb that abuse and the subsequent costs. To begin with, responsibly strengthening pleading standards would keep many baseless suits out of the systems. Plaintiffs seeking money awards for damages should be required to state the particular nature and effects of material Y2K defects and how they figured into calculating those damages. In addition, to insure fairness, rejected plaintiffs should be allowed to refile their suits with the required specifics in order to protect legitimate claims that are not initially apparent. Furthermore, legislation should deny awards for damages that could reasonably have been avoided. Class action suits are normally the most expensive and wasteful of product liability lawsuits and often contain enormous numbers of groundless complaints. Legislation should insure that the majority of members in class action suits have truly experienced Y2K-related failures and deserve redress.”