Consumer Law

The CPSIA and How ?Tort Reform? Groups Sold Small Businesses Down the River

By Joe Consumer

If you listen to big corporate lobbyists and their neo-con friends at certain ?think tanks?, they will tell you that lawsuits by consumers - even cases brought by state Attorneys Generals to protect the public - are this country?s greatest sin. 

It doesn?t matter how important such cases have been or that time and again, business surveys show that liability ranks as a concern far below other matters like workforce, healthcare and a range of tax and regulatory issues.  This is especially true for small businesses.  (Not to mention the fact that so-called ?tort reform? measures actually can limit small businesses? rights to sue big companies whose defective equipment, for example, caused damage? but we digress.)

The real problem is that the fixation of these corporate lobbyists on ?lawsuits? and ?litigation? is so extreme, so irrational, that they blow off the actual concerns of their small business members ? I mean, they don?t even mention them even when landmark legislation is being debated for months!  The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) is pretty good example of that. 

This CPSIA was passed in 2008 after a public health disaster hit this country ? toxic toys with dangerous lead levels, causing brain damage in children and helping make 2007 ?The Year of the Recall.? 

These lobbyists are now all up in arms about the impact of this bill on certain small enterprises (even though the real culprit is the refusal of Bush holdovers currently running the Consumer Project Safety Commission to properly enforce the law and issue exemptions, as Congress directed.)  As we noted before, "some of these suggestions from the small business community might be perfectly reasonable."  In fact, they should have been raised at the time the bill was being written, and they would have been dealt with.

But over the months that this bill was being drafted, groups that represent small business who were at the table, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said nothing about these concerns.  Here were the Chamber?s ?issues? with the bill: 1. Giving power to state AG?s to bring lawsuits; 2. Limiting ?the preemptive authority of the CPSC,? which will lead to lawsuits; 3. Giving new legal rights to whistleblowers, and;  4. A public database of product defects for parents, because it will lead to ? lawsuits!

The Chamber wasn?t alone.  Same for the National Association of Manufacturers.  And same for the right-wing Manhattan Institute, which shares contemptible views of the entire law with the Bushies at the CPSC.

The lesson here?  Business lobbyists in Washington have a bizarre, single-minded obsessive, not to mention baseless, focus on consumer lawsuits.  This fixation is damaging and destructive, obscures everything they do, and even causes them to ?sell down the river? the small businesses whom they should be representing, when it matters most.  If I were a small enterprise, I?d be fuming mad at these lobbyists, and I'd start demanding some accountability.  I?m just sayin?.

(You can learn more about the dangers of "tort reform" here.)

Full post as published by ThePopTort on March 25, 2009 (boomark / email).