Jim Sensenbrenner: “I respect greatly the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey), but when he armed his cannon, he pointed it at the…”

“I respect greatly the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey), but when he armed his cannon, he pointed it at the wrong target. This bill has nothing to do with assault weapons or tax breaks or oil prices or the 9/11 Commission or catching Osama bin Laden or casualties in Iraq or whether the North Koreans have a nuclear weapon or not; nor does it deal with legitimate meritorious lawsuits. What it does deal with is frivolous lawsuits, frivolous lawsuits as defined by the same Federal Rule of Civil Procedure that was on the books for 10 years, between 1983 and 1993, that 80 percent of the Federal judges when they were surveyed believed should be retained in its then current form. This bill does not restrict the access to the courts to anybody who has got a meritorious claim. But what it does do is that it sanctions those lawyers who file frivolous lawsuits and deter them from filing frivolous lawsuits again. If we did not have sanctions against people, people would ignore the law. If there were no sanctions for driving 50 miles an hour over the speed limit or running a red light, I think it would be pretty dangerous for all of us when we went home. Because the sanctions that are currently in rule 11 have no deterrent effect against filing frivolous lawsuits, there are too many of them.”