Prop 64

Ah, yes, only big evil greedy faceless corporations could possibly endorse 17200 reform, you see. The obvious answer to this is to see how much the plaintiff's bar is going to spend to oppose 17200. (Well, no; the obvious answer is to address the question on its merits, rather than on who contributes to what.) But in any case, it is not big business that suffers the most from 17200 abuse. Big businesses can afford the lawyers and the time that it takes to defend against wrongful 17200 cases. Small businesses, however, suffer far more, particularly because their cases tend to end in settlement, without being reported. But in reality, businesses earning less than $10 million per year in this country pay $150,000 per year on average in tort liability. Businesses earning less than a million per year pay $17,000 per year. All this talk of greedy corporations buying off politicians is a smokescreen to protect the cashflow of plaintiffs lawyers who like to sue the Kwikset Corporation for millions of dollars for saying their locks are made in America when it turns out that “the products contained either ‘a screw or pin made “entirely…outside of the United States,”’ or had a ‘latch assembly that was sub-assembled in Mexico....’” Benson v. Kwikset Corp., 15 Cal.Rptr.3d 407, 414 (2004).

Update: More on Prop. 64 here, here and here.