John Kerry: “Both of the presentations that were made are incorrect with respect to what I said. The Senator from Oregon made a bold…”

“Both of the presentations that were made are incorrect with respect to what I said. The Senator from Oregon made a bold defense of contract law, and the economic loss argument that he made refers to the preservation of existing contract law. But economic loss is a tort claim. It is a tort claim. His argument is simply irrelevant when he says he is protecting the capacity of the contract law, so to speak, to be preserved within the framework of the economic loss argument. Here is why: My colleague from Connecticut just said we are trying to open this up to some broad, new thing, and the example he cited would not be, in fact, included. It absolutely would be included because our language includes both of the examples that he gave. If it is provided in the contract, the person would be made whole. Or if it is the result of a Y2K failure, the person would be made whole. Here is the only difference. We go one step further. We do not allow them a whole lot of intentional torts except--and I read from the language--``where the tort involves misrepresentation or fraud.'' That is the only ``new thing'' here.”