Some Comments on Congressional Debate Re: y2k Liability

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The U.S. House Judiciary Committee voted 15-to-14 to pass a limited liability bill. Party line vote. One Republican crossed over and voted against the bill. This bill would make it significantly harder and riskier to sue for y2k damages.

This bill is expected to pass the House, but all y2k liability limitation legislation faces possible death in the Senate. The White House has also threatened veto. (Stopped clock syndrome?)

This quote is from the Wall St. Journal, May 4: "Business groups pressing for the legislation say litigation could cost between $200 billion and $1 trillion in the U.S. without intervention from Congress."

At three days of disruption, that's $333 billion dollars of damages per day. Yowza!

At a local y2k summit, the reps from BellSouth and the local power company, both of whom said they'll be fine, were asked if they supported this legislation. Strangely, both y2k reps claimed to be uninformed on this issue.

Query: Where there is total inconsistency between an organization's PR statements and its executive actions, to which should you attach more weight?

-- Puddintame (achillesg@hotmail.com), May 05, 1999

Answers

Gee, this should have gotten a little more attention:

..This quote is from the Wall St. Journal, May 4: "Business groups pressing for the legislation say litigation could cost between $200 billion and $1 trillion in the U.S. without intervention from Congress."

Now, 1 trillion dollars is a mighty huge sum of money to defend against lawsuits for a little bump in the road, minor/insignificant problems lasting only a coupla days, don't you think?

-- (mass@delusions.com), May 07, 1999.


Oh, heck. Even $200 billion is an eye-popper sum for potential litigation problems stemming from 'something insignificant' 'not a problem' 'a bump in the road'.

-- (mass@delusions.com), May 07, 1999.

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