Blake Farenthold: “This amendment should be roundly opposed for the simple reason it doesn't protect any victims, but it also victimizes…”

“This amendment should be roundly opposed for the simple reason it doesn't protect any victims, but it also victimizes local parties in the types of cases covered by the amendment. The purpose of the underlying bill is to allow judges greater discretion to free innocent local parties--that is, innocent people and innocent small businesses--from lawsuits when those innocent local parties are dragged into a case solely because a plaintiff's attorney wants to do some forum shopping. These innocent local parties have, at most, an attenuated connection to the claims made by the trial lawyer against some national company a thousand miles away. These innocent local parties shouldn't have to suffer the time, expense, and emotional drain of a lawsuit when the plaintiff can't even come up with a plausible claim. The base bill protects these innocent local parties from being dragged into a lawsuit as a party just to keep the case in State court. Now, let's bring in this amendment, which denies the bill's protection to innocent local parties adjoined to a lawsuit simply because the legal allegations in the case fall into one arbitrary category and that one is in another. It is terribly unfair. This amendment would allow these things to happen to innocent people in the name of allowing trial lawyers to scuttle the hydraulic fracking industry through lawsuits.…”