More background reading on the Draconian consumer product safety law:

• Fear of losing even more high-quality German toy suppliers [Kathy + Matt Take Milwaukee]
• Mattel will pay $13 million to 20 plaintiff’s firms to resolve class action over toy recalls; claimed value of settlement to class (vouchers, etc.) is something like $37 million [National Law Journal, Coughlin Stoia release; earlier] Note also Rick Woldenberg’s March analysis of one recall (recall of 436,000 units premised on two cans of bad paint).
• New law “has added several new tasks [to the CPSC], many of which most charitably can be described as marginal in the overall pursuit of product safety that will divert staff and financial resources from more important safety issues.” [attorney Michael Brown, quoted at Handmade Toy Alliance Blog]
• Alarmist reporting on Boston’s WBZ affords a glimpse of “the scary people behind the law” [Woldenberg]
• Effort to help move blogger Kevin Drum up the CPSIA learning curve [Coyote]
• “The “Resale Round-up,” launched by the CPSC, finally limits the power of these merchants of death who recklessly barter second-hand toys to unsuspecting civilians at low prices…. The only question now is how did any of us survive this long?” [David Harsanyi, Denver Post]
• Among its other effects, the statute “will boost opportunities for mass-tort suits” [Crain’s Chicago Business]
• Law’s “continuing disaster for small business” illustrates difference between crony capitalism and the real kind [James DeLong, The American, with kind words for a certain “indispensable” website that’s covered the law]

PUBLIC DOMAIN IMAGES from Ethel Everett, illustrator, Nursery Rhymes (1900), courtesy ChildrensLibrary.org.

Filed under: accolades, class action settlements, Coughlin Stoia, CPSC, CPSIA, small business