Jack Reed: “I rise to speak about S. 5, the Class Action Fairness Act. First and foremost, I want to commend both the Republican and…”

“I rise to speak about S. 5, the Class Action Fairness Act. First and foremost, I want to commend both the Republican and Democratic Leaders for all the work they did to bring this bill before the Senate. In particular, I am pleased that the consent agreement allowed all relevant amendments to be offered and debated. I believe many of these amendments would have improved the underlying legislation without threatening its reforms. In particular, I think we should have adopted the Feinstein-Bingaman amendment, which would have given federal judges clear guidance about how to apply state consumer laws in multi-state class action lawsuits. This would have permitted more multi-state consumer class actions to be certified in federal court and resolved on their merits. After S. 5 is enacted into law, I believe we should rapidly revisit this issue and make sure that consumers are actually getting their day in court and not having their class action cases thrown out because Federal courts are deeming them too complex or unmanageable to certify. That being said, I think this legislation benefited greatly from the negotiations entered into by Senators Dodd, Landrieu and Schumer with the bill's major sponsors, Senators Grassley, Kohl, Hatch and Carper. Although S. 5 is not the bill I would have written, I do think it will address some of the well-documented problems created by overlapping class actions in State and Federal courts.”