Foreign Manufacturers Legal Accountability Act: Yeah, right

August 13th, 2009. By AbiK

So Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL) introduced a bill calling for new legislation regarding products that are manufactured abroad—and found to be defective or cause injury here. No doubt the impetus for their bill has been the Chinese drywall situation. Let’s face it, for those who’ve been affected by the defective drywall, it’s been an uphill battle to get accountability where it belongs—upstream in the supply chain to where the drywall was manufactured: China.

Oh sure, there’s been cooperation with Chinese officials. And everyone’s got studies going on to determine the root cause of the rotten egg smell and the corrosion of air conditioning coils and all. But here’s the thing—who’s going to pay? And on that note, not only is no one eager to raise their hand and shout, “Me, Me, Me—I’ll pay!”, everyone also knows it’s a prayer in you-know-what to try and enforce payment—especially if it’s supposed to be coming from China.

The Foreign Manufacturers Legal Accountability Act (guess we won’t be able to shorten it to FMLA Act, huh?) is a stab at closing some loopholes and killing some red tape so Americans would have some recourse in situations like the Chinese drywall one. The bill calls for foreign companies to retain a business representative in at least one state where the company does a significant amount of business—so the company could be sued. Basically, if a piece of you is here, on American soil, we can come after you.

I haven’t seen the bill or any fine print on it, and who knows if it’ll even go anywhere. Senator Whitehouse’s website states that the Consumers Union and the Consumer Federation of America support the bill. As if we thought they wouldn’t?

The reality of the bill though is just what exactly does having a “representative” retained locally buy you? It doesn’t seem to say that the company would have any actual assets on American soil. And what about reciprocity? Does anyone honestly think that our foreign trade partners are going to line up and sign up for this one without any tit-for-tat that would require more stringent product liability regulation and enforcement on American exports?

Not to sound jaded—I do at least applaud the effort to DO something given the desperate situation Chinese drywall homeowners are finding themselves in. But I wouldn’t be hanging my hat on this one just yet. In the interim, eveyone’s best bet is to at least consult with a Chinese drywall lawyer—some drywall cases are being selected for “fast-tracking” in the courts and that process should provide some clarity on how collection of damages will play out going forward.

Tags: chinese drywall

This was posted on Thursday, August 13th, 2009 at 9:08 am and is filed under Defective Products . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.