John Hope Bryant: “Mr. Chairman, I think it is extremely important that we focus on the fact that the McHale amendment is not an amendment…”

“Mr. Chairman, I think it is extremely important that we focus on the fact that the McHale amendment is not an amendment to this bill that would make the bill deal with frivolous suits. It is an amendment to the bill which adds another step in this process. Were it an amendment which converted this bill into one that would screen out frivolous suits I would wholeheartedly support it and I think nearly all of us would. What it does is add to this draconian and unprecedented in 200 years notion of loser pays, a provision that says that little person who does not have very many resources and is not going to be able to get a lawyer to work for them to bring a case against a big person or institution, whether that be the government or a major company of some kind faces an additional hurdle, and that is that a local judge perhaps friendly and philosophically inclined in the way of a defendant might slap him with a dismissal under the McHale amendment and make him pay attorney's fees, but if he can get past that and then he has the outcome that is foreseen in the Republican bill, he then faces once again the possibility of having to pay attorney's fees, costs, and be flatly bankrupt for simply trying to pursue what might have been a meritorious case. I would urge Members to look carefully at this.”