Bomb? More like a firecracker!

The $1 billion lawsuit aimed at blasting Saipan’s garment industry hit the newspapers like a Public Relations bomb a few months ago, but now the thing looks like a mere firecracker.

Several of the retailers targeted by the lawsuit–a lawsuit that demonstrates that economic terrorism via litigation is a growing trend in America–recently agreed to settle for the sum of $1.25 million, it was reported.

Uh, did we get those numbers right…(checking the facts, er, yeah, that looks right)…from one BILLION to just over one million? Heck, getting clipped for a mere million or so was probably better than prevailing totally in the lawsuit, given the cost of having to battle it out in court.

In percentage terms, $1.25 million is just 0.125 percent of $1 billion. If the lawsuit had any real merit, would the plaintiffs have accepted less than two-tenths of one percent of what they claimed they were entitled to? Of course not.

Litigation as a tool for economic terrorism is a disturbing trend in a nation already being bled to death by the lawyers. Don’t like the tobacco industry? Have cities and states file massive lawsuits against it. Firearms? Ditto, now. What’s next? Perhaps book publishers who print things that are unpopular? Why not? It’s a pretty clever way to do an end-run around that pesky old document, the Constitution.

I don’t know beans about law, nor do I care to, but I’d like to float an idea about how to improve things. Why not make the losing party in a lawsuit pay all the legal bills, plus some amount for the inconvenience, to the winner? Could this perhaps curtail the “lawsuit lottery,” in which any weasel lawyer can sue anybody for anything, knowing the only thing he’s risking is his time? Surely there must be some places in the world that have taken this approach. Surely some judge somewhere has upholstered his chamber sofa with freshly skinned weasel hides.

Back in our fair corner of the world, we certainly haven’t heard the last on the $1 billion lawsuit yet. So far, though, it looks like the guys that filed it are losing every single battle along the way.

If the supposed issue is the welfare of our garment workers, then, by all means, let’s take an objective look at labor conditions. This has been done, not only by OSHA but various and sundry other concerns, all of which had very critical eyes. The garment industry has borne up well under such scrutiny.

Next step: Look at the economic reality faced by garment workers. Oddly enough, those who shriek the shrillest about the “plight of workers” are the ones who totally ignore the economics of why workers work. I’m told by bankers that the average Chinese garment worker here will take about $15 thousand home with her after a three year stint. That’s a small fortune in China, where people on average have incomes of less than $800 a year. Yes, that’s per YEAR. So why would denying them an opportunity to get ahead in Saipan somehow help them? Clearly, it wouldn’t. The elitists who preach their love for the proles are after power, not economic progress, and this is the single most compelling lesson of the 20th century, as the USSR, China, and a host of other Marxist bastions developed the brutally efficient apparatus of wholesale misery and statist slavery.

Ah, that’s a pretty heavy concept. Back to the light and lively end of the spectrum, it’s sort of funny to see the billion dollar PR bomb turning into a dud, a mere fizzling firecracker. “Pop” go the weasels.