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Contact: Christopher Chichester
202-225-4236
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End Internet Gambling and Frivolous Lawsuits
Washington,
Jun 13, 2003 -
Last week two major bills passed the House of Representatives that I co-sponsored.
The first bill reduces the amount of gambling online. The second ends the filing of frivolous lawsuits, an abusive practice that hurts consumers and clogs our courts.
Internet gambling threatens young people across America. It is a deceptive crime that is difficult to stop.
What if you discovered someone built a casino next to your house and invited your children in to gamble? Unfortunately, the news is worse.
Casinos are already inside homes across America. Every computer with an Internet connection is a child accessible casino that offers an invitation to gamble.
At the click of a mouse, virtual casinos appear on computer screens. All that’s required to play is a credit card number and time. Our young people increasingly have both.
Almost 80 percent of college students have credit cards and nearly a third have four or more credit cards. With more than 1,500 gambling sites on the Internet, it’s just a matter of time before young people find one.
If the negative impact on our children, families and communities isn’t enough, the FBI reports that unlawful and unsupervised Internet gambling sites serve as a powerful vehicle for money laundering, which terrorists use to finance attacks on innocent Americans.
The people who create and run Internet gambling sites do it for one reason: money. The Unlawful Internet Gambling Funding Prohibition Act I support ends Internet gambling by making it illegal to place a bet online with a credit card, check, or electronic transfer.
In addition to a ban on Internet gambling, the House passed legislation to prevent state courts from being overrun with frivolous lawsuits.
Many lawyers, looking for the most favorable judges, conduct the equivalent of a legal shopping spree: they use loopholes so class action suits can be heard in state courts rather than federal courts.
Only lawyers hit the jackpot in the class action lottery. In one settlement, consumers were awarded 33-cent checks with Chase Manhattan bank, while attorneys in the case walked away with $4 million in fees. But class members had to use a 34-cent stamp to mail in the response to claim the 33-cent award!
To describe this suit - as well as a few others - as “frivolous” is an insult to frivolousness.
The Class Action Fairness Act is a reform that restores confidence in our judicial system. It prohibits the payment of “bounties” to class representatives and ensures cases that cross state lines are heard in federal courts, as the framers of the Constitution intended.
This reform eases the strain on overburdened state courts, provides a uniform standard for class action suits that involve residents of different states, and avoids the problems that can occur when one state court dictates the laws of 49 other states.
Both of these bills make significant progress toward a stronger America by improving the health of our culture. They await action in the U.S. Senate.
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