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The Supreme Court Rules on Preemption and it is Bad News for the Toy Industry
March 18, 2009
Back in September of 2008 I wrote a blog post about a worrying case that was coming before the Supreme Court. The name of the post was "The Supreme Court and the Toy Industry," and the subject was preemption, a legal concept that maintains that federal laws supersede state or local laws.
As I wrote at the time: “According to a November 18, 2008 New York Times article entitled, ‘Drug Label, Maimed Patient and Crucial Test for Justices,’ [the patient] became injured, sued in her state court and won a $6 million judgment. That case was appealed and has found itself before the Supreme Court with some other cases that all want a determination on the principle of ‘pre-emption,’ a legal concept that stipulates that the federal government has the ultimate authority. In other words, a Federal law trumps a state or local law.”
This case is important to those of us in the toy industry as we want one national set of safety laws and don’t want to have to have to adjust our standards to 50 different state laws. At the time, I quoted a New York Times reader as saying: “It is ridiculous to expect businesses engaged in interstate commerce to comply with the vagaries of fifty different and conflicting sets of product standards.”
Well, get ready for the ridiculous because the Supreme Court ruled for the patient and in so doing ruled against preemption. We all need to keep an eye on the implications of this ruling.
Posted by Richard Gottlieb on March 18, 2009 | Comments (0)
