Senate hands Bush & supporters major victory today re class-action suits

[flpoljunkie]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/10/politics/10cnd-class.html?ei=5094&en=e0125e897a6ac9f0&hp=&ex=1108098000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&position=

February 10, 2005

Senate Passes Overhaul of Rules for Class-Action Lawsuits
By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 - The Senate voted overwhelmingly today to shift many class-action lawsuits from state courts to federal courts, handing President Bush and his supporters in the business world a major legislative triumph.

<>Passage in the House seems assured, since that chamber overwhelmingly endorsed similar legislation last year, before it stalled in the Senate. This time, though, the idea was backed by enough senators, Democrats as well as Republicans, that passage was not in doubt.

<>All 26 votes against the measure were cast by Democrats. But though trial lawyers as a group are often described as a Democratic constituency, and trial lawyers opposed the measure, 18 Democrats joined 53 Republicans and the Senate's independent, James Jeffords of Vermont, in voting yes. (Two Republicans, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and John Sununu of New Hampshire, did not vote.)

<>"This bill is one of the most unfair, anticonsumer proposals to come before the Senate in years," Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, the minority leader, said just before the vote. "It slams the courthouse doors on a wide range of injured plaintiffs." Many deserving cases will be dismissed, he predicted, and those that are not may have to go "to the back of a very long line in the overburdened federal court system."

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[The Backlash Cometh]

1. Don't worry. People's suffering will make it on the Oprah show

and in one more generation people will be slapping their foreheads and say, "What the fuck did our parents do!"