we are happy to have professor brickman. and to my immediate right, we have bob norton, the vice president of the bradley foundation. before he got to the nonprofit world, where bob and i knew each other for years, he was the assistant general counsel for chrysler, or daimlerchrysler is in, including the head of their class-action practice for seven years. he has seen many of these cases from the perspective of a corporate defense counsel and can shed light on the issue from that perspective. lester, i would like to start with you before we turn to bob. you have done a lot of work on this. you come at it from an ethics standpoint. what is the fundamental ethical claim here? >> i would say there are two main issues. one is the inherent conflict of interest between the interests of the class members and the interest of the attorney that scoops them up into a class. it is interesting when you think about how a class is formed. if theoretically, the 50,000 people that would constitute this class were polled and asked , how many

we are happy to have professor brickman.d to my immediate right, we norton, norman -- bob the vice president of the bradley foundation. before he got to the nonprofit world, where bob and i knew each other for years, he was the assistant general counsel for chrysler daimlerchrysler is in, including the head of their class-action practice for seven years. he has seen many of these cases from the perspective of a corporate defense counsel and can shed light on the issue from that perspective. start, i would like to with you before we turn to bob. you have done a lot of work on this. you come at it from an ethics standpoint. what is the fundamental ethical claim here? >> i would say there are two main issues. one is the inherent conflict of interest between the interests of the class members and the interest of the attorney that scoops them up into a class. it is interesting when you think about how a class is formed. if theoretically, the 50,000 people that would constitute this class were polled and asked , how many of you wo

let's thank our panel wittman and lester brickman. [applause] those of you in the room who want cle credit sign out and turn in your evaluation form. thanks. [inaudible conversations] >> at the creation museum believes space upon the bible but we also teach people the difference between believes and what one can observe and experiment with and i believe we are teaching people to think critically and in right terms about science. i believe it's the creationists that should be educated -- educating the kids out there because we are teaching them the right way to thing. we have met our origins and has dark designer based on the bible but i'm challenging evolution is to be upfront about the difference here. i encourage you to explain to us why, why we should accept your word for it that natural law changed just 4000 years ago completely and there is no record of it. you know there are pyramids that are older than not. there are human populations that are far older than that with traditions that go back farther than that and it's just not

this was in reaction to research done by folks like professor brickman and matt institute, showing what was happening when you got state-level courts, separate state and federal courts in the united states and the state courts are getting class-action and making determinations that affected the national flow of commerce and some of the state courts in fact were becoming so-called magnetic words that were attracting a disproportionate, in some cases a large percentage of the national class-action bar in those judges and juries tended to be favorable towards the plaintiffs. the class-action fairness act of 2005 in part was designed to give federal jurisdiction over these cases said they be heard in a federal court that procedurally would have a more neutral base of rules for determining litigation. a separate part of that reform was designed to eliminate so-called coupon settlements, where individuals got coupons in lieu of cash and the lawyers' fees for inflated and that is very akin to the types of settlements that mr. frank regularly challenges and will be talking about in a minute. th