Fairness in Class Action Litigation Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to H.R. 1927, the so-called Fairness in Class Action Litigation Act.

In 2013, in Butler v. Sears, Judge Posner of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals spoke critically of the commonality in damages requirement found in this bill.

He said that ``the fact that damages are not identical across all class members should not preclude class certification. Otherwise defendants would be able to escape liability for tortious harms of enormous aggregate magnitude but so widely distributed as not to be remediable in individual suits.'' The court found that such a requirement ``would drive a stake through the heart of the class action device.''

Furthermore, Mr. Chair, the bill includes the so-called FACT Act, which would have a devastating impact on workers exposed to asbestos.

In the last few decades, thousands of workers in my district have developed asbestosis, lung cancer, and mesothelioma because of asbestos exposure that occurred between the 1940s and 1970s.

This exposure was inflicted upon many victims by corporations, such as one a New Jersey court found to have ``made a conscious, cold- blooded business decision, in utter flagrant disregard of the rights of others, to take no protective or remedial action.''

That is the kind of business that will benefit from the bill. The victims don't want it.

In the letter the ranking member will be introducing, they point out that veterans represent 8 percent of the population, but 30 percent of the victims.

That letter points out that the FACT Act would mandate unnecessary public disclosure of sensitive personal information and would increase the cost of litigation, thereby limiting the available pool of money to compensate the victims of those cold-blooded business decisions.

Mr. Chairman, I would hope that we would recognize that the asbestos victims have suffered too much already. Therefore, we should defeat this legislation.

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