Chuck Schumer: “Mr. Chairman, if there ever was a commonsense legal reform, this amendment is it. Every year hundreds of manufacturers…”

“Mr. Chairman, if there ever was a commonsense legal reform, this amendment is it. Every year hundreds of manufacturers who know their products are dangerous hide behind court secrecy orders to conceal the truth from the American public. As a result, thousands of innocent, men, women, and children are maimed, poisoned, injured, and even killed simply because they never learn the truth. The truth and their fates are sealed in secret by lawyers behind closed doors. In some cases, secrecy order follows secrecy order, year after year, while the list of mutilated and dead grows longer and longer. Let me just give one case, because this has been so much a battle of the anecdotes, that shocked me. It ought to shock everybody. There is no more innocent activity than little kids going out to play. Yet, for over 13 years, an equipment manufacturer of playground equipment sold a merry-go-round that it knew was causing serious injury to scores of small children, mostly around 5 or 7 years old, children like little Rebecca Walsh, who had two fingers chopped off; like Larry Espinosa and Dale Lukens, whose bones were crushed; other children who had their hands and feet cut off. These kids were hurt and their lives forever twisted.”