Hugh Hewitt posted an article at Townhall.com about the impact some of the decisions recently made in the state of California will have on the business climate there.
Mr. Hewitt reports:
"Earlier this week I wrote on the so-called "Green Chemistry Initiative" for the Washington Examiner, and one of my law partners quickly emailed to let me know that wasn't even the worst business news out of the state that week! Gary Wolensky subsequently posted at HughHewitt.com about the California Supreme Court's decision in Kwikset Corporation v. The Superior Court of Orange County, and the phone has been ringing and email in-box filling up since then with exclamations of disbelief. The decision opens the doors to thousands of new nuisance lawsuits against every product on every shelf in California, even as the new "green chemistry" regulations when they appear in final form will apply to all products sold in the state. 2011 is opening with a double feature horror flick for job generators even as the state careens towards unofficial but very real bankruptcy."
Mr. Hewitt is a practicing attorney as well as a law professor in California and is very much in tune with court decisions that impact business. The Kwickset case essentially says that anyone can sue a company even if they were not harmed by the product. If your pancake mix has a small error in the ingredients label, anyone in California can sue the company that manufactures it. This decision, plus the 90 pages of 'green chemistry' legislation is going to keep businesses moving out of California to states where they do not have to deal with such issues.
If the states are the laboratories for government policy, California is showing all of us how to bankrupt a state. That's a shame, since it is such a beautiful state. The questions is, "When Congress is asked to bail out California because it has gone broke as a result of the laws it has passed, what will Congress do?"
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