CPSIA: “We are sorry to report…”

Fewer options for kids in Santa Rosa, California:

We are sorry to report that Eleven 11 Kids has been forced to close its doors as of February 10, 2009 due to the new federal children’s environmental law, CPSIA, (HR4040) that went into effect on 2/10/09.

And then the store explains in some detail why it felt it had to close. It is too polite, perhaps, to mention that both California senators, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, played prominent roles in getting CPSIA passed, with Boxer in particular pushing the retroactive phthalates ban that has been notably harmful to resellers.

Plowed under

At ShopFloor, Carter Wood writes that the Senate version of the bill was (even) more extreme in its provisions than the House version, and that the Senate version unfortunately “wound up playing a bigger role in the writing of the final bill”. The Hospice of Amador and Calaveras Thrift Store, in California’s Sierra Nevada, is still operating but has stopped carrying children’s items.

In Ellensburg, Washington, north of Yakima, Cheryl Smith was “living the American dream” with her store Hailina’s Closet, which “opened last April and [sold] gently used children’s clothing and toys.” But it is just a memory now. The Kitsap Sun reported that Perfect Circle, a Bremerton children’s consignment store, also had to go out of business.

A few more reports from Goodwill: Roanoke, Virginia, Le Mars, Iowa (rare good news, some items being put back on shelves), Rock County, Wisconsin.

Copland and Howard: a proposal for drug-injury administrative compensation

My Manhattan Institute colleagues James Copland and Paul Howard are the authors of a just-released paper which proposes comprehensive federal preemption of state product liability drug litigation, combined with a new administrative compensation program for persons injured by unforeseen drug side effects, modeled on the existing vaccine injury compensation program. Their paper is here, and the section on administered compensation begins here. A summary, and early reaction: Medical News Today, Legal NewsLine, their Washington Times op-ed, AmLaw Daily (“makes for interesting reading”), Drug and Device Law (cross-posted from Point of Law).

Judge/insurance fraudster sentenced in Pa.

Former state Superior Court judge Michael Joyce, of Erie, “was sentenced this afternoon to nearly four years in prison.” Joyce’s bogus claims of neck and back pain after a rear-ending had netted him $440,000 in settlements; “the judge filed his claims on judicial letterhead, [Assistant U.S. Attorney Christian] Trabold said, and referred to himself as a judge 115 times in the letters.”

Watch out, motel owners

Social conservative Maggie Gallagher, with whose views we have been known to differ, suggests a tort of “facilitating” adultery that would apply to businesses that “that intentionally and explicitly attempt to profit from acts of adultery”. [NRO “Corner”, first, second posts]

P.S. Eugene Volokh now has a more lengthy and serious treatment: “you can love marriage and hate adultery without thinking that more tort liability will make things better.”

CPSIA: “Children’s books have limited useful life (approx 20 years)”

whenmonstrisbornCarol Baicker-McKee is stunned to find that line appearing as part of a slide presentation for staff of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) on enforcement of CPSIA (for those just catching up, CPSC’s guidelines last month recommend that resellers discard pre-1985 kids’ books unless the books are put through expensive testing.) It has her “ready to move to Australia. Or, better yet, ready to make Congress move to Australia and let the country start fresh.” Read the whole thing. More: Esther at Reader’s Loft.

“[O]ur entire world is a potentially dangerous place in which to live”

Dismissing a suit claiming that cigarettes and upholstery should have been flameproof, a Kentucky federal judge last month had this to say:

No court has found that there is a duty to make our world fool-proof or risk free. Nor is there a duty to warn of obvious consequences of foolish behavior.

In this case, we will reject the opportunity to hold that just because something could happen, failure to prevent it is unreasonable….

Nothing this court can do will change what happened. But we are obliged to ensure that the law is applied dispassionately, and in a principled way.

[Patrick at Popehat]