Mass Tort Defense : Mass Tort Defense Lawyer & Attorney : Sean P. Wajert : Dechert Law Firm : Products Liability, Class Actions, Pharmaceutical Litigation

Multiple reports indicate that an unnamed company filed a suit last week, under seal, to challenge aspects of the Consumer Product Safety Commission's new public database.

Readers may recall that the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 mandated the creation of a consumer product safety information database, and from the beginning, there was controversy about the absence of an adequate process for addressing false and inaccurate reports that will scare consumers, harm business, and generate no additional safety gains; the need to employ means to prevent the submission of fraudulent reports of harm while not discouraging the submission of valid reports; the importance of not putting the governmental imprimatur on voluntary data that has not been verified; and the absence of a sufficient time period allocated for manufacturers to evaluate and respond to any proposed report.

The suit was reportedly filed in federal court in Maryland, and relates to material inaccuracies with respect to a report of alleged injury that found its way into the database.  The suit apparently asks that the CPSC be enjoined from keeping the complaint about one of the company's products in the public database.

Almost anyone can file a “report of harm,” including consumers; government agencies; health care professionals; child service providers; and public safety entities. Consumers could include not just the purchaser of the product but their personal injury attorney, with their own agendas.

Manufacturers have only a limited opportunity to review and dispute information in incident reports before they are published on-line in the CPSC database. Manufacturers have limited control over what information can be removed or amended once posted. The two dissenting votes at the time the CPSC commissioners approved the database made an unsuccessful attempt to amend the final rule so as to give manufacturers more time to comment on or respond to the inaccuracy of postings before they are published to the database and to the public.

The database is accompanied by a weak disclaimer stipulating that CPSC has not verified the accuracy of any report. Observers continue to worry that the agency has not paid sufficient attention to legitimate issues of a manufacturer's goodwill and reputation, to the costs of unnecessary panic among product consumers, and the mischief that plaintiffs' lawyers might cause with unwarranted increase in litigation against manufacturers.

A recent U.S. Government Accountability Office report on the database found that of 1,800  published reports, manufacturers noted that 160, nearly 10%, had materially inaccurate information.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

We have posted before about one of the more controversial aspects of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, the to-be-created publicly accessible database of product safety information.

The CPSIA mandates that the database be completed by March, 2011. The agency views its task as the creation of a public portal and a publicly accessible, searchable database of consumer product incident reports. Through the public portal, consumers will theoretically be able to report potential product safety hazards to CPSC in ways that are supposed to improve the quality, value, and accuracy of the data collected. Manufacturers will be able to investigate and respond to product hazard reports more quickly, and to share information with both CPSC investigators and with the public through the public database. And consumers are supposed to be able to use the public portal and database to find more information about hazards in order to keep their families safe.

Unless done very carefully, the database will be of little use to the average consumer, but subject to potential mischief in the hands of plaintiff lawyers.

Since last Fall, the CPSC has held various meetings and a two-day public workshop to gather stakeholder input on the new database. A number of affected groups have submitted comments on the implementation of the new product safety database, including the Soap and Detergent Association.  A common theme for the comments is the need for the CPSC to focus on verifying and ensuring the accuracy of safety incident reports submitted to the commission. Factual accuracy and veracity are two fundamental elements underpinning a credible incident database. 

CPSC needs to develop a process for addressing false and inaccurate reports that will scare consumers, harm business, and generate no additional safety gains. The commission needs to employ means to prevent the submission of fraudulent reports of harm while not discouraging the submission of valid reports.  CPSC also needs to think about specific disclaimers it should make with regard to the accuracy of the information contained in the public database, and not put the governmental imprimatur on voluntary data that has not been verified.  A sufficient time period should also be allocated for manufacturers to evaluate and respond to any proposed report.    

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed into law a new enactment governing e-discovery in that state.  Readers of MassTortDefense know what a significant issue electronic discovery has been in products litigation, particularly since the amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure more specifically focused on e-discovery issues. Rather than a device to uncover relevant facts for the litigation, e-discovery often is about plaintiffs’ attempt to find some alleged misstep by the defendant that will bring sanctions.

The Governator signed the Electronic Discovery Act, establishing new rules and procedures for litigants who seek electronically stored information.  The law is designed to make discoverable only  those reasonably accessible sources of electronic data, and it provides that litigants shouldn't be sanctioned for losing data through the ordinary operation of an electronic system. The law establishes that a party may move for a protective order from an electronic discovery request on the grounds that the information sought is inaccessible, though it gives courts discretion to require limited discovery in those cases if the demanding party shows good cause, subject to specified restrictions in specified circumstances.

California courts may also limit electronic discovery from accessible sources if they determine that the information sought could be obtained by other means, is duplicative, or if the expense of
the discovery outweighs its likely benefit. While the Electronic Discovery Act allows courts to
impose sanctions on parties which fail to comply adequately with discovery requests, the courts shall not impose sanctions on a party (or any attorney of a party) for failure to provide electronically stored information that has been lost, damaged, altered or overwritten as the result of the routine, good faith operation of an electronic information system.

The new law also requires discovered materials to be produced in the form in which they are kept in the ordinary course of business.

MassTortDefense noted that a survey by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform of chief legal officers at Fortune 100 companies revealed that:

-On average, 45‐50% of respondents’ civil litigation costs in 2007 related to discovery activities.

-Discovery of ESI accounted for, on average, a significant share (between 33‐39%) of total discovery costs.

-Costs associated with e‐discovery vendors were reported in 63% of large cases. When used, e‐discovery vendors accounted for, on average, 10‐12% of total costs.

-About 61% of case respondents felt that certain discovery requests received from the opposing party were designed to impose undue settlement pressure by increasing the costs to continue the litigation.

-In both state and federal court, the company respondents reported that more than half of their civil litigation matters involved the receipt of discovery requests that sought information beyond the claims or defenses at issue.

- About 31% of company respondents reported that at least 40% of the time ESI requested from them by the opposing party is not reasonably accessible.

This bill is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.
 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks