Legal News

WSJ Editorial: Congress Shoots Marbles, Helps Lawyers

By Dan Slater

The WSJ editorial board sounds off this morning on what it suggests is another full-employment act for lawyers: a bill, sponsored by Arkansas Democrat Mark Pryor, greatly expanding the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

“Politics may not be child’s play,” begins the piece, “but Congress is back shooting marbles over consumer product safety this week. With consumers shaken up by tainted Chinese imports, toy companies have already been instituting internal safety checks — but the Senate wants to help the lawyers too.”

Under the expanded bill, the agency’s budget would double by 2015, to $155 million from $63 million. Also, civil penalties faced by companies in violation of consumer safety rules would rise to $250,000 from $8,000 for each incident, with a maximum of $20 million for multiple violations.

The editorial board’s doomsday scenario is that the new bill will: (1) Encourage whistleblowers with a provision that keeps employees from being fired merely by claiming knowledge of a product safety violation; (2) Distribute enforcement power among state AG’s to file lawsuits and enforce rules against manufacturers based on their own interpretation of consumer product safety laws (”Think Eliot Spitzer times 50,” writes the editorial board); (3) Hurt small and medium-size toy businesses that can’t afford the cost of navigating multiple enforcement regimes; and (4) Worst of all, create a new set of incentives for plaintiffs — and their trial lawyers.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 04, 2008 (boomark / email).