madam speaker , reclaiming my time , yes , this provision is intended to respond to concerns that class actions with a truly local focus should not be moved to federal court under this legislation because state courts have a strong interest in adjudicating such disputes .  at the same time , this is a narrow exception that was carefully drafted to ensure that it does not become a jurisdictional loophole .  thus , each of the criteria is intended to identify a truly local class action .  first , there must be a primarily local class .  secondly , there must be at least one real local defendant .  and by that the drafters meant that the local defendant must be a primary focus of the plaintiffs ' claims , not just a retailer or other peripheral defendant .  the defendant must be a target from whom significant relief is sought by the class , as opposed to just a subset of the class membership , as well as being a defendant whose alleged conduct forms a significant basis for the claims asserted by the class .  for example , in a consumer fraud case , alleging that an insurance company incorporated and based in another state misrepresented its policies , the local agent of the company named as a defendant presumably would not fit this criteria .  he or she probably would have had contact with only some of the purported class members and , thus , would not be a person from whom significant relief would be sought by the plaintiff class viewed as a whole .  and , from a relief standpoint , the real demand of the full class in terms of seeking significant relief would be on the insurance company itself .  third , the principal injuries resulting from the actions of all the defendants must have occurred in the state where the suit was filed .  this criterion means that all or almost all of the damage caused by the defendants ' conduct occurred in the state where the suit was brought .  if defendants engaged in conduct that allegedly injured consumers throughout the country , the case would not qualify for the local controversy exception , even if it was only brought as a single state class action .  and , fourth , no other class action involving similar allegations has been filed against any of the defendants over the last 3 years .  in other words , if we are talking about a situation that results in multiple class actions , those are not the types of cases that this exception is intended to address .  i would like to stress that the inquiry under this criterion should not be whether identical or nearly identical class actions have been filed .  rather , the inquiry is whether similar factual allegations have been made against the defendant in multiple class actions , regardless of whether the same causes of action were asserted or whether the proposed plaintiff classes in the prior case was the same .  