Welcome to Scali Rasmussen’s blog, focusing on the various legal issues impacting the consumer products industry—designers, manufacturers, distributors, retailers (brick and mortar and e-tail), and entrepreneurs—including up-to-date information and analysis pertaining to California’s Proposition 65, aka. the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986. The articles below provide a comprehensive analysis on all aspects of product safety issues, including appellate court opinions, notable verdicts and settlements, state and federal regulatory action, and product recalls.
California’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986 makes it unlawful for a business with ten or more employees to expose a person in California to a chemical “known to the State of California to cause cancer” or “reproductive harm” without providing a clear and reasonable warning.
It received plenty of coverage in the national press last March when Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle issued his tentative ruling in a recent Proposition 65 case against roasters and sellers of coffee that would effectively require a clear and reasonable warning that brewed coffee contains a chemical known by the state of California to cause cancer, because coffee contains acrylamide, a listed carcinogen. This had far greater potential than just a judgment against coffee companies. The private enforcer / bounty hunters might well argue that any business with ten or more employees that served coffee—whether a restaurant, a coffee shop, or an automobile dealer with a coffee-serving lounge—would be required to warn coffee drinkers that they were being exposed to a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer.
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