Political Quotes

“Mr. Chair, Members of the House, this amendment makes a bad bill even worse. To begin with, it would prohibit cy-pres distributions pursuant to which parties attempt to find the next best use of funds that remain after a class action settlement has been finally administered. Cy-pres is especially important in actions where the recovery is so small for an individual class member that he or she may not bother to make a claim or where a distribution is not practical. For example, courts under cy-pres may permit unclaimed settlement funds to provide indirect compensation to the class, such as future price reductions or remediation efforts. As a result of this amendment, however, the unclaimed settlement funds would be returned to the very entities that caused the injury in the first place. Simply put, this amendment would benefit the wrongdoers to the detriment of the victims they harmed. In addition, this amendment would restrict the amount of compensation a victim could receive under a settlement agreement to the extent the victim was actually harmed by the wrongdoer. The amendment completely ignores the pragmatic realities of systemic harms, such as widespread long-term or latent environmental damage like lead-contaminated public water drinking systems--think of Flint, Michigan--where the extent of a victim's exposure to such harms may be difficult and, perhaps, even impossible to quantify.…”