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October 29, 2004
Election Thoughts: Prop 64
This act makes it harder to sue someone for unfair competition. Specifically, unless a claimant is the State Attorney General, a District Attorney, County Counsel, or a City Attorney; they’d have to prove that they had suffered from said unfair competition. Any moneys paid by a defendant as part of a losing claim would go to “the exclusive use by the Attorney General, the district attorney, the county counsel, and the city attorney for the enforcement of consumer protection laws”.
I have a fairly knee-jerk reaction against attempts at “tort reform”, so I thought I’d give this one a look, just to make sure I wasn’t making a mistake. Boy, am I glad I did, had I not, I wouldn’t have known how bad this measure would be...
The big, glaring problem with this act is that if a company (Say Microsoft) unfairly competes with me, and puts me out of business, I can’t get any money. None. Zero. The state gets to keep it. So, in effect, even citizens who have suffered damage have little-to-no-incentive to sue. Sounds good for Microsoft, bad for consumers...
Posted by Andrew at October 29, 2004 09:21 PM
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