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Trade groups craft legislation to limit Y2K liability



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Trade groups craft legislation to limit Y2K liability

By Jessica Davis
InfoWorld Electric
Posted at 10:38 AM PT, Feb 3, 1999
http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?99023.eey2kleg.htm

A coalition of several trade groups -- including the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the
Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) -- has crafted
new federal legislation to limit business-to-business year-2000
liability.

The new legislation, expected to be introduced to Congress this
week, would set a cap of $250,000, or three times damages, on
punitive damages in year-2000 lawsuits.

The legislation would also

* require potential plaintiffs to seek a nonlegal remedy to year-2000
problems by providing the vendor with the opportunity to correct any
problem before a lawsuit is filed;

* require plaintiffs to look to mediation to resolve year-2000
disputes before resorting to litigation; and

* prohibit plaintiffs from recovering damages for problems they knew
about and did not take measures to correct.

"We have gotten an unbelievable positive reaction on both sides of
the aisle and both sides of [Capitol] Hill to this," said Marc Pearl,
general counsel and senior vice president of government affairs at
ITAA. "[Legislators] recognize that this is a short-term, sunset
issue that could have an economic impact the likes of which we've
never seen before."

Estimates from the Gartner Group have placed the costs of year-2000
lawsuits at $1 trillion, significantly more than the $600 billion in
estimated costs to fix all of the code susceptible to year-2000
problems.

--------------

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