"Last-minute 17200 fix drawn up for Legislature"
Today's Recorder has this article on "SB 185, authored by Sen. Byron Sher, D-Stanford, that used to deal with an amendment to the state's Public Utilities Code. The bill is now slated to be reworked to include changes to 17200, the state's unfair competition law, according to sources familiar with the legislation." (Here's the current status page for SB 185; as of this morning, it hasn't been amended since last September and still relates to the Public Utilities Code.) The Recorder article also mentions an interesting editorial from Tuesday's Los Angeles Times, entitled "Suit Initiative Goes Too Far." The editorial says: "With the exception of some trial lawyers and dishonest litigants, just about everybody would like to do away with frivolous lawsuits. The trouble is, most of the proposed 'solutions' would strip away protections intended to keep predatory businesses from abusing consumers. Proposition 64, a November initiative that would gut the state's tough Unfair Business Competition Law, falls in that category. .... Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has yet to take a public stand on the measure, should quickly move to broker a legislative deal that would spare voters from what could become one of November's most heavily contested propositions."
- posted by Kim Kralowec @ 9:07 AM