John Conyers: “In the interest of all the Members knowing about the objections to this bill, I bring to them communications from the…”

“In the interest of all the Members knowing about the objections to this bill, I bring to them communications from the Consumer Federation of America, which urges that we oppose the measure, indicating that this bill will create numerous barriers to participating in class actions by permitting defendants to remove most State class action suits to Federal court and will clog the already-crowded Federal court system. In addition, we have a letter from Public Citizen... which writes to comment about the importance of class actions and how these so-called 'procedural changes' will do great damage to groups of consumers who, in trying to bring action against corporate defendants, would be forced either to bring individual suits or to remove themselves to a Federal docket for reasons that are not quite clear to most of us that are not happy about the bill. Some of these notions are not in the public interest. I hope that, first of all, everybody voting on this bill will not think that this is a consumer-supported bill. It is opposed by consumer organizations and would clearly be damaging to consumers trying to get into the court.”