Melvin Watt: “What my colleagues want to do is take the already high standard, the one that is a step up, that applies to every other…”

“What my colleagues want to do is take the already high standard, the one that is a step up, that applies to every other member of society, and create what I would call an impossibility standard, because if we adopted this language, you would never ever be able to win any cases in the securities area because any time recklessness is alleged or somebody is engaged in fraudulent conduct, the securities person would come back and say, ``Oh, well, that might be true, but I forgot to tell you,'' and all of a sudden they would be off the hook. Well, my colleagues, I thought the purpose of this bill was to get rid of frivolous lawsuits and to cut down on the amount of securities litigation which we have built in a wonderful procedure for trying to stop those kinds of lawsuits.”