Seriously? An amendment against rape is in danger of not being passed? What the hell is wrong with these people?

From the article:
"The Senate is considering taking out a provision known as the Title VII claim, which (if removed) would allow victims of assault or rape to bring suit against the individual perpetrator but not the contractor who employed him or her.

That doesn't seem too stupid. Why should a contractor be liable for the criminal behavior of one of his employees?

That would likely take the "deep pockets" out of the case for most laywers.

I dunno.. there are instances where the company Knew what was going on and did nothing to stop it. There are times when the company had no place for complaints to go, or complaints were ignored...

Those are the times when the company should be involved in the suit. They may not have pulled the trigger, but they gave a madman a high powered sniper rifle and stuck him in a clock tower, shouldn't they be responsible for that?

I don't agree with the deep pockets thing, I don't think that just because Joe worked for WalMart and he turned out to be a psycho that it's WalMart's fault. I DO think there are some times when a company should be held responsible though.

No question that some times those comments may be true. However there are not too many companies that hire a worker and do such a complete check on his history or have a psychological analysis made of his potentially criminal behavior that they should be held accountable.

It is standard practice of lawyers to sue everyone they can to increase the possibility of a large award. The "deep pockets" inclusion is SOP. Then all those named in the suit have expensive defense costs even if they are eventually excluded from the suit.

Having a law that allows lawsuits against anyone that's involved with the plaintiff makes no sense and in fact is one of the current problems with health care as it exists in the US today.

Nobody questions that lawyers sue too much. But in this instance this bill was introduced because of past neglect and abuse of power from contractors and one instance with KBR specifically where a worker was gang raped and held captive by her coworkers and KBR officials. Defense contractors operating in foreign lands are notorious law breakers and the problem is systemic and needed to be addressed. If I work someplace that does not take basic precautions to protect my safety and then goes even further and has a system in place that allows me to be abused and held captive by its own employees then they deserved to be held accountable. Don't forget that large corporations often only change their ways if it affects the bottom line.