
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, February 14, 1995                   TAG: 9502150032
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

LIABILITY LAWSUITS TARGETED

Lawmakers are drawing partisan battle lines on the issue of product liability as Republicans push a proposal that would make it harder to win punitive damages from companies that sell harmful products.

The measure - part of the GOP's campaign ``Contract With America'' - would establish a national, uniform set of laws on product liability that would limit the sums awarded to injured people and force the losers of many federal lawsuits to pay the winners' legal fees.

Democrats who oppose the bill called it Monday ``a giant step backwards for the cause of equal justice'' and said it would deprive citizens of legal redress if they are harmed by defective products.

Republicans said the measure is essential to free businesses from a crazy quilt of state laws and to limit the growth in court-clogging lawsuits.

Such verdicts as a $2.7 million award to a woman for burns from a spilled cup of McDonald's coffee and a $125 million penalty against Ford Motor Co. for Pintos with exploding gasoline tanks have led to efforts to limit damages that companies can be ordered to pay when their products harm someone. Punitive damages are intended to punish companies that sell harmful products.

Although the companies ended up paying only a fraction of the original jury awards in many such cases, most states have revised their laws governing punitive damages.

``Many believe this patchwork of over 50 separate state product-liability laws is simply costing America too much,'' said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, R-Ill., at a hearing on the bill. ``It discourages capital investment, dampens job creation and denies consumers new, safer and less expensive products.

``The fundamental interstate character of this area of the law would seem to justify a uniform, national solution,'' Hyde said.

But Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the committee's senior Democrat, called the proposal ``dangerous.'' He contended it would have ``a particularly devastating effect'' on women, because several major liability suits have involved such products as breast implants and intrauterine devices.``What ever happened to family values?'' Conyers asked. ``Legal fairness is too important to sacrifice for some 100-day deadline.''

Opponents of the bill dispute the contention that product liability litigation is out of control. Such cases are a small fraction of all civil litigation, they say.

Robert B. Creamer, executive director of Illinois Citizen Action, told the hearing that from 1965 to 1990, punitive damages were awarded in fewer than 15 product liability cases each year nationwide. One-quarter of them involved asbestos damage claims.

Creamer said companies suing other companies account for a much larger share of civil litigation than product liability cases.

By establishing a national code of product liability laws, the measure also would create ``federalization of state judges and juries ... for the first time in 200 years,'' said consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who heads the group Public Citizen.

by CNB