U.S. Gov't Still Fighting the Man Behind Buckyballs; Guess Who's Winning?

usacoder writes with news of Craig Zucker, former CEO of the company behind Buckyballs, the popular neodymium magnet toys that were banned by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission in July 2012. Zucker ran a brief campaign to drum up opposition to the government's ban, but it didn't turn out to be enough. Unfortunately for Zucker, the story didn't end there. Despite the magnets being labeled as not for kids, the Commission filed a motion to find him personally liable for the costs of a product recall, estimated at around $57 million. "Given the fact that Buckyballs have now long been off the market, the attempt to go after Mr. Zucker personally raises the question of retaliation for his public campaign against the commission. Mr. Zucker won't speculate about the commission's motives. 'It's very selective and very aggressive,' he says. ... Mr. Zucker says his treatment at the hands of the commission should alarm fellow entrepreneurs: 'This is the beginning. It starts with this case. If you play out what happens to me, then the next thing you'll have is personal-injury lawyers saying "you conducted the actions of the company, you were the company."'"

Comments

Re:Sounds good to me

[Anonymous Coward]

"the vast majority are frivolous lawsuits" cite sources
This has been studied extensively. Every study I have read on this shows that judges tend to toss out the frivolous lawsuit and that the majority of cases that got to trial actual have some merit.

Re:the last line rings true...

[whoever57]

Now of course it's been taken too far and corporate people have become bestowed with more and more attributes of personhood as time goes on. Citizen's United is the most famous recent aspect of this.

I even read (or heard on the radio) some expert claiming that shareholders did not "own" companies, because companies were persons and laws against slavery prevent people owning other people. Yes, really! His argument was that shareholders only owned an entitlement to some share of future profits. Nothing more.

Re:How about

[arth1]

Lego has sharp corners, and an untold number of children have hurt themselves, including eye injuries. Let's switch to Duplo, the safer alternative!

Bah, when I was a kid, I was whittling, taking the bus alone and doing pyrography at age six. Kids today might have a slightly higher chance of reaching adulthood alive, but for a much lower value of "alive".

The historical complaint of old people has been that the young have been too radical and reckless. We now have the first generation where the opposite is true - the youngsters are complacent slugs, incapable of a radical thought or reckless action. Even their music doesn't suck because it's too wild for us, but because it's too boring.