Jay Rockefeller: “I have been--in case nobody has noticed--trying to enact what I call moderate product liability for many years--8 or 9…”

“I have been--in case nobody has noticed--trying to enact what I call moderate product liability for many years--8 or 9-- because I am convinced that consumers and businesses alike are ill served by the current disjointed State-by-State legal system. Under this patchwork system of State laws that we have--glorified by those who propose this--victims are forced to wait far too long for compensation after their injury, and far too often it is the lawyers who benefit more from the awards, the settlements received, than the victims, which is not what I thought America was about. This is simply unjust. I am absolutely convinced that the flow of goods in interstate commerce is severely hampered by the patchwork of product liability laws across this Nation. Businesses of every size and type simply have no way of knowing, under the current system, what rules they need to follow. How could they? They have 50 States to deal with. Businesses are hard pressed these days, small businesses in particular. This is especially onerous on those same small and startup enterprises which, in my State of West Virginia and most of the rest of the Nation, are in fact the backbone of the economy.”