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May 15, 2007
Sacramento - The Civil Justice Association of California (CJAC)
today lauded Attorney General Jerry Brown for powerfully
challenging a Connecticut lawyer who has made millions of
dollars pursing questionable legal actions against California
businesses under the state's Proposition 65 warning law.
In a six-page letter
to Clifford A. Chanler of Hirst & Chanler in New Canaan,
Connecticut, Brown said that Chanler and his clients' tactics do
not "appear to be in the public interest" and that his fees "may
not be legally justifiable."
Brown's letter
states that Attorney General office records show Chanler's firm
and three clients collecting more than $15 million in
settlements from hundreds of smaller defendants, $9.2 million of
it going to the firm in attorney fees. These totals appear to be
only related to actions brought over lead in glassware and
ceramics.
"We hope Attorney
General Brown's letter is the first surge in a long-needed flush
of the polluted legal backwater hosting Proposition 65's
so-called 'private enforcers,'" said CJAC President John H.
Sullivan. "Once again, a well-intended law used responsibly by
public prosecutors goes off track when un-elected private
lawyers move in to make themselves money. These are the same
kinds of private lawyer shakedowns that voters stopped in a
different legal area when they passed Proposition 64 in 2004."
The Attorney General
letter notes that Chanler's clients "have collected significant
sums of money from businesses that have little or no liability
for past violations, and an amount of attorney fees that appears
to exceed a reasonable amount." The letter states that Chanler's
manner of pursing Proposition 65 matters "needs to change." It
proposes a number of steps, including answers to questions such
as: "If the alleged violator was willing to comply immediately
and had no back liability," how is legal action "necessary" and
"in the public interest?"
(See full letter in PDF form HERE)
Passed by California
voters in 1986, Proposition 65 requires the state to publish a
list of chemicals known to cause cancer or birth defects and
further requires businesses to notify the public about the
presence of these chemicals. Legislative attempts in 1999 and
2001 to curb predatory private lawyers have resulted in little
more than documenting the large number of actions and the
attorney fees they produced.
Last year Appellate
Justice David Sills, in one of the few Proposition 65 cases ever
to reach the appellate level, blasted some private attorneys for
"the absolutely generic boilerplate quality" of their notices.
He included a mini-essay on "how simple it is for a hypothetical
unemployed lawyer...to extract money from businesses" and
concluded that in the case before him "instead of $540,000, this
legal work merited an award closer to a dollar ninety-eight."
California Civil Justice Association
1201 K Street Suite 1960
Sacramento, California 95814
916-443-4900
www.cjac.org |
