Related: Sunday’s New York Times has a long article asking whether law schools are adequately disclosing the high likelihood that their costly offerings will turn out to be a poor investment for many heavily indebted students. Should U.S. News law-school rankings, like cigarette packs, carry warnings? [Above the Law]

Related posts

• WSJ: John McGinnis reviews Schools for Misrule (2)
• William Henderson, Andrew Morriss: “It’s Time to Restore Morality to Law School Rankings” (1)
• What happened to the slavery reparations movement? (27)
• What Elizabeth Wurtzel tells us about the XOXOHTH lawsuit (3)
• Welcome radio listeners, Chicago Daily Law Bulletin readers (0)

Related posts

• When a judge sues for defamation, cont’d (0)
• Watch what you say about lawyers: Marina Tylo, Paul Revere III, Jones Day (5)
• Watch what you say about lawyers, cont’d (7)
• Watch what you say about lawyers dept.: Amiel Cueto (0)
• Updates – June 20 (2)

Related posts

• Update: licensing eBay sellers (2)
• U.K.: Union defends eBay-addicted town workers (2)
• Trademark abuses of the month (7)
• Selling an item on eBay… (1)
• Ohio: let’s not license eBay sellers (0)

Related posts

• December 2001 archives, part 1 (1)
• April 2001 archives, part 1 (0)
• Update on Mraz v. Chrysler (1)
• September 2001 archives, part 2 (0)
• September 2000 archives, part 3 (0)

Related posts

• UK: Not with my daughter you don’t! (2)
• U.K.: Union defends eBay-addicted town workers (2)
• Microblog 2008-11-10 (2)
• Libel suit over negative eBay feedback (1)
• January 20 roundup (8)

In our previous posts about the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), the federal law passed by Congress last year in the wake of the panic over Chinese toys with lead paint, we noted that it threatened to drive out of business a lot of small makers of wooden toys and other childrens’ products who cannot afford to spend thousands of dollars per lot to confirm the absence of lead paint (or phthalates, another banned substance) in their wares. A group called Handmade Toy Alliance has formed to call attention to the law’s burden on small manufacturers, and offers further detail at its website.

As reports in the last week make clear, however, a second economic disaster is also looming: thrift and secondhand stores around the country sell a large volume of clothing, toys and other items meant for use by those under 12, and are now exposed to stringent liability under the law. “The reality is that all this stuff will be dumped in the landfill,” predicted Adele Meyer, executive director of the National Association of Resale and Thrift Shops. Among the biggest losers if stores stop selling secondhand kids’ items: poorer parents who would have trouble dressing a growing family if they had to buy, say, winter coats new for $30 rather than used for $5 or $10. The regs are scheduled to take effect Feb. 10.

On January 8, as press coverage mounted, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) rushed out a supposed clarification of the regulations: thrift shops, eBay sellers and other second-hand retailers would not be compelled to institute testing programs on all items sold, the way manufacturers would. But the commission made clear that if the stores do wind up selling any secondhand products containing the substances — phthalates, for example, are often found in bendy plastics — they face both criminal liability and civil fines (which run up to $100,000). It isn’t required that the store know or should have known that a pre-2009 item was in violation, and of course it isn’t required that anyone be harmed by the good (the entire episode has gone on with a near-total absence of any showing that actual kids had been harmed by the products swept from American shelves).

None of which seems to faze some advocates of the new measure. At Law and More, Jane Genova quotes Sue Gunderson, executive director of an anti-lead-paint group called ClearCorps:

What thrift stores seem to be requesting [in Gunderson's view] is for the right to expose children to health and safety hazards. “Let’s get our priorities straight,” she insists. She goes on to pose this rhetorical question: “Mmmmmm, do we want cheap, second-hand toys that could damage children?” She frames this issue as a “business” one which the thrift-store industry will have to solve just as will every other business impacted by the new act.

If you think this is all too crazy to actually be happening, wait until you read the Boston Phoenix’s piece on the law’s threat to libraries:

“We are very busy trying to come up with a way to make it not apply to libraries,” said [Emily] Sheketoff [associate executive director of the American Library Association]. But unless she succeeds in lobbying Capitol Hill for an exemption, she believes libraries have two choices under the CPSIA: “Either they take all the children’s books off the shelves,” she says, “or they ban children from the library.”

Tags: CPSIA, CPSIA and libraries, CPSIA and resale, CPSIA and toys, eBay, lead paint

Related posts

• CPSIA: Things I learned at the rally (22)
• New York Times on CPSIA: “needless fears that the law could injure smaller enterprises” (40)
• Kids’ empty shelves: CPSIA continued (9)
• CPSIA: What will be enforced? (16)
• CPSIA: throwing away 500 stuffed animals (9)

Related posts

• Student: dorm’s ferret ban violates ADA (4)
• UT hassling Longhorn users (0)
• Update: Segway lawsuit against Disney (9)
• Update: Kindle not helpful enough to blind users (7)
• Suit charges slow evacuation of broken Disneyland ride (3)

Related posts

• When a Holy Saint sues (0)
• Very big breaking news: UK libel laws narrowed (2)
• Update: British chiropractors drop lawsuit against Simon Singh (1)
• UK: Police “wanted” posters could infringe privacy (2)
• U.K.: Union defends eBay-addicted town workers (2)

Meanwhile, Roger Parloff at Fortune checked and found eBay was not exactly complying with that very sweeping court injunction obtained by luxury goods maker LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy) which required the removal of relevant auctions not only on ebay.fr but on the American site and other affiliates if persons in France are able to access those sites. (Jul. 16).

Related posts

• October 1999 archives, part 1 (0)
• May 2002 archives, part 3 (1)
• March 2002 archives, part 2 (0)
• March 2001 archives, part 2 (0)
• July 2002 archives, part 2 (0)

Related posts

• Trademark abuses of the month (7)
• Smiley face trademark litigation (2)
• May 14 roundup (2)
• June 2002 archives, part 2 (1)
• January 2001 archives, part 2 (0)