Republicans have been trying to kill class actions and push tort reform bills for years. It's been a losing battle since the Class Action Fairness Act of two thousand five,
co authored by GOP Congressman Rob Goodlat. Now good Lat, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has introduced the broadest of a series of bills designed to discourage class actions and make it harder to sue businesses joining us as Paul Barrett of Bloomberg business Week, who has written about this in an article entitled will the GOP finally crushed class actions? Paul? How will these bills make it harder
to bring class actions? Chairman good Lat's bill, which is the one that directly addresses class actions, has a whole series of provisions, no one of which would would spell the end of class actions, but in combination, they would make it much more difficult for plaintiffs lawyers to bring
these cases. For example, uh, there's a provision in the bill that requires that a legal fees for the plaintiff's lawyer be a percentage of only of the money that has actually gone to the alleged victims in the case, so that if the remedies sought by the class action was just a change in corporate behavior. That might mean that the that the plaintiffs lawyers would not be entitled to any damages, and that in turn, obviously would be
a huge deterrent to the bringing of those kinds of lawsuits. Well, there's also there are also provisions to prevent UM firms from doing multiple representations and multiple suits of the same plaintiffs.
What's that all about. Yeah, Well, actually, that provision which we wrote about in our article, which was in the bill as of late Wednesday, was was taken out of the bill at the very very last second because it was attracting a lot of attention, So that there was a provision originally in the bill that basically would have made it very difficult for the experienced securities class action law firms that bring UH cases of that UH securities
fraud cases and frequently represent the same institutional investors over and over. It would have made it very difficult for them to do business. But good lad actually had the bill amended, it literally on the floor at the last minute, and that provision is now out. So, Paul, what are the chances that this will pass not just the House but the Senate. Well, these bills are passing the House,
and that's as expected. They face a much tougher set of obstacles in the Senate, where the Republicans have only a fifty two to forty eight advantage, which means that under Senate rules, to avoid a filibuster, they need to find eight Democrats to go along with them. Now, they have a strategy for that. They're going to target UH, Democrats from red states who are up for re election in eighteen and hope that they can peel away a
few of those votes. Well, that's an interesting strategy though, Paul, because you know, stopping people playeffs from from suing big corporations. How does that play out in terms of trying to get say, you know, white, middle class Trump voters in red states to vote against Democrats. Well, I think it is potentially challenging, and it's not obvious how that issue plays.
And that's one of the reasons why this kind of legislation generally, UM is very difficult for business interests to pass on the federal level because what your constituency UH is can be a little bit ambiguous. Businesses clearly want restrictions on civil litigation, but whether the little guy wants those restrictions is is far more ambiguous when you hear about class actions, Paul. Many people think about enormous fees for the plaintiff's lawyers involved. But class actions have also
led to changes in industry practices. And recently there was the Trump University class action on behalf of six thousand students. So there are some class actions that do good as well. Um, if this does pass, will it be something that Donald Trump would sign, Well, certainly Republicans are speculating, um that the President Trump would sign such legislation. With President Obama in the White House, there was an almost certain veto for anything along these lines, um. But President Trump presents
an ambiguous figure himself. He has been the target of of all kinds of civil litigation, as you mentioned, um, but he also has been a very aggressive plaintiff in a number of occasions, uh, during his business career. So he's both someone who gets who got sued a lot, and who himself filed a lot of lawsuits. So just quickly, Paul, I mean, I know you're reporting on this, and you've given us a sort of handicapping of it, but does it really look like this is the year this could
go through the Senator? Is it going to be just too big a challenge for the Republicans? No, I think it's it's plausible. I think business interests that are enthusiastic about this are correctly, uh, calculating that this might be the year to actually push through a substantial amount of legislation. Well, it's a great article with a lot of information packed in it. That's Paul Barrett of Boomberg business Week, and the article is entitled will the GOP finally crushed class actions?
Coming up on Bloomberg Law? Thanks so much for being here, Paul. Coming up on Bloomberg Law, we'll look at the Republican healthcare bill. What will it really mean? What are its chances of passing. We'll be talking to Harry Nelson. He's a partner at Nelson Harridman and he's the author of the book Obamacare to Trump Care, Why You Should Care