Anthony Weiner: “I would love to know who the 20 percent are that like frivolous lawsuits so that we can have a focus group with them.…”

“I would love to know who the 20 percent are that like frivolous lawsuits so that we can have a focus group with them. They are probably lawyers of some sort, I would imagine. First, let me just say we rarely have an opportunity to take a look at a proposal before us today and look at almost an identical proposal that was the law of the land between 1983 and 1993. Then, too, there was an effort to unclog the courts of frivolous lawsuits; then, too, the Judicial Conference, not this body, the Judicial Conference said we have to try to come up with some rules. What was the effect? The effect was not reducing the amount of frivolous lawsuits; it was adding a whole new level of litigation around frivolous lawsuits. Rather than simply having a judge say, that is frivolous, it is out of here, let us move on with the case, you then had suits and countersuits over whether or not something was frivolous, because it was elevated with the changes that were made in that decade.”