Is the media finally catching on to the Bush administration’s campaign to weaken the rights of consumers to seek compensation for injuries from faulty products? Maybe. A few outlets picked up on Alicia Mundy’s Wall Street Journal piece about the administration’s attempts to do an end around Congress and the Courts in its effort to undermine consumer protections in state courts.
Bush administration officials, in their last weeks in office, are pushing to rewrite a wide array of federal rules with changes or additions that could block product-safety lawsuits by consumers and states.
The administration has written language aimed at pre-empting product-liability litigation into 50 rules governing everything from motorcycle brakes to pain medicine. The latest changes cap a multiyear effort that could be one of the administration’s lasting legacies, depending in part on how the underlying principle of pre-emption fares in a case the Supreme Court will hear next month.
Coincidently, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a new regulation today that seeks to immunize school bus manufacturers who comply with federal standards from liability for personal injury caused by faulty products.
