Mike Enzi: “President, I rise to briefly discuss S. 648, a bill to establish standards and procedures for products liability…”

“President, I rise to briefly discuss S. 648, a bill to establish standards and procedures for products liability legislation. I am proud to be a cosponsor of that bill and I feel that it should be a legislative priority for consideration during this session of the 105th Congress. In the 104th Congress, both the House and Senate passed meaningful product liability reform legislation only to have it vetoed by President Clinton. The President now indicates that he wants to sign a products liability reform bill. Legal reform has the broad support of the American people and strong bipartisan support in Congress. With each passing day, we are losing an opportunity to do the people's business by not enacting common sense legal reform. S. 648 is designed to inject some common sense into runaway punitive damage awards in view of the need for some semblance of uniformity in our National interstate commerce system. Last May, the United States Supreme Court held in BMW in North America v. Gore, that punitive damages can be considered so excessive as to violate a defendant's constitutional due process rights.”