Political Quotes

“I must start my remarks by confessing that he really had me dead to rights on one of the comments that he made about the impact of his own amendment. I will have to confess error and then say that I believe that error strengthens my case rather than weakens it. I had said earlier during the course of this debate that the result of the passage of this amendment, giving litigants in every State two choices of different laws to enforce would simply mean, because of the restrictions included in the bill here, that all plaintiffs' lawyers would seek to bring their actions in the State courts in order to avoid the restrictions on punitive damages and on joint liability. And the Senator from Tennessee quite properly pointed out that there are a number of instances in which this bill, the Rockefeller-Gorton bill, treats plaintiffs' claimants more liberally than do the laws of various States. He took the statute of repose, which is 20 years in this bill, 10 to 12 years in most States that have a statute of repose--obviously, if the cause of action was based on a piece of machinery or a product that was 15 years old, the choice would be to go into Federal court and get the advantage of that more liberal provision.”