Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the manager's amendment to H.R. 985 with all due deference to the chair of our committee. Although the amendment makes a number of mostly technical amendments to the bill, it still fails to address the numerous fundamental flaws that we have identified in the underlying legislation, which is a dagger pointing at the heart of class action lawsuits in America. The major substantive change that I noted under the manager's amendment was that class certification would still be prohibited when a named plaintiff or class representative is a relative or employee of the class counsel, but made some other changes narrowing the scope of the conflict of interest provision slightly. The amendment still fails to address the fundamental problem with that provision, which is that there is no justification for concluding that the specified relationships are, per se, problematic or that class certification should be denied just because such a relationship exists. The general problem pervading the legislation remains. The first is a procedural problem, which we have identified. I was delighted that the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Farenthold) responded to our complaint that we had had no hearings on the bill. In response to that, he directed my attention to a hearing that took place in 2011, 6 years ago. There are nine members of the Judiciary Committee who just joined this year and many dozens of Members who have joined the House since 2011.…”