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Life & Times Transcript
2/27/07 Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- An environmental law is creating a nightmare for hundreds of small businesses and putting millions in the pockets of a few attorneys. Danny Ginsburg>> It's just morally and ethically wrong. Even if technically and legally you can get away with it, it's just wrong. Val Zavala>> And then, inmates who grow old behind bars and stay healthy on the taxpayers' dollar. Is it time to set them free? These stories and more next on tonight's Life and Times. Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Val Zavala>> Sometimes laws that are meant to do good things have unintended consequences. Take Proposition 65. It helps keep our drinking water clean and it keeps toxic chemicals out of the products we use. But some attorneys are using Proposition 65 to get pretty rich. They're raking in big bucks by suing small businesses for not putting up warning signs. For an example, we go to the working class neighborhood of Highland Park northeast of downtown Los Angeles to a soda pop shop called Galco's. For the past fifty-one years, Galco's Old World Grocery on York Boulevard has been selling specialty sodas, old-fashioned sodas in glass bottles. John Nese>> We have about five hundred different kinds of soda. Val Zavala>> Five hundred? John Nese>> Yes. We run right around five hundred. Val Zavala>> John Nese is the owner. His unique store has earned him attention from national magazines and loyal customers. I've never heard of this one. John Nese>> Cheerwine. Val Zavala>> Cheerwine? John Nese>> Yes, it's from North Carolina. It's 1917. Val Zavala>> Where do you find all these? John Nese>> Everything is available. What we've been doing is working with a lot of little tiny bottlers. Val Zavala>> But in July of 2006, John Nese received a legal notice from a person he's never met, an environmental engineer from Berkeley named Whitney Leeman and her attorney, Clifford Chanler, in Connecticut. The notice said Galco's has been selling soda in bottles that contained lead, specifically lead found in painted labels on certain labels. John Nese>> This is a compliant label. Val Zavala>> It's painted -- John Nese>> -- it's painted. Val Zavala>> But the color is white, so there's no problem. John Nese>> The whites, the blues, the greens and now yellows are all compliant. The colors they're having problems with are reds and oranges. Val Zavala>> It's possible for lead from the paint to go from a hand to the mouth or possibly get inside the bottle. Lead is just one toxic chemical covered by Proposition 65, an environmental law aimed at protecting the public from hazardous chemicals. But is the law also being abused? There are nine hundred chemicals on the Proposition 65 list. That means there are thousands of opportunities for attorneys and "citizen enforcers", as they're called, to sue and they can sue even if the citizen has never visited the business or been personally harmed by the product. Nehi Grape Soda was one of the offending products. Nehi stopped shipping to California because of Proposition 65. >> "Did you ever get Nehi Grape again?" John Nese>> "There's no more Nehi Grape. They're being sued by some people up in Berkeley and they're suing them over painted label bottles." Val Zavala>> The notice that Galco's received says "exposures to the listed chemical have been occurring without clear and reasonable warnings as required by Proposition 65." So after getting the notice, John posted these signs to comply with the law. Case closed, right? Wrong. John Nese>> And what's been happening is, they sue you no matter whether you have the signs up or not. Val Zavala>> That's because John and other businesses are still liable for the time the signs were not posted. And it's not just retailers, but manufacturers, suppliers, restaurants and a wide range of businesses can be sued under Proposition 65 even after removing hazardous products and posting warning signs. Randy Visser>> They are in every hotel. They are in every business establishment. There's one right outside our business building because people smoke and tobacco smoke is on the list. So you will see them virtually at every business establishment you go to. One reason, to protect that business establishment from being sued. Val Zavala>> Randy Visser is an environmental attorney who defends companies facing Proposition 65 lawsuits. What if I'm late in putting up the sign? Randy Visser>> Then you would have violated the law for that year. There's a one-year statute of limitations for Proposition 65, so any sales, in this case, of soda bottles for that prior year, you would be subject to penalties. Val Zavala>> And that can add up. Proposition 65 allows for penalties of twenty-five hundred per day per exposure. So if Galco's sold a hundred bottles of the hazardous sodas, the maximum fine would be two hundred fifty thousand dollars. Visser says that, over the past five years, about twenty-six thousand California businesses have received Proposition 65 violation notices resulting in sixty-one million dollars in penalties. And where has most of the money gone? Well, a small portion has gone to the state of California, but most of it, sixty-six percent, has gone for attorneys' fees. Randy Visser>> But having brought an action in the public interest and established a public right, they have the right to their attorneys' fees. Val Zavala>> But, says Visser, that also creates an incentive for some attorneys to use Proposition 65 as a money-making machine. Randy Visser>> What has started a cottage industry, as you can imagine, are plaintiffs' lawyers who can make quite a strike it rich load of money out of this because they can file hundreds and hundreds of lawsuits. Val Zavala>> And the businesses, he says, especially small ones, often have little choice but to settle. Randy Visser>> If somebody comes to you and says, "You're going to have to hire a lawyer, maybe pay thirty, fifty, seventy-five thousand dollars to take it to trial, maybe more than a hundred thousand dollars. Yet if you pay me thirty thousand right now, you're free and clear. Put up the warning and you'll never have to see me again", and they will not be sued by somebody else for the same product. John Nese>> And I'm a retailer. I sell it. I don't make it. I don't manufacture it. All I do is sell it. Val Zavala>> Records show that Leeman and Chanler have sent similar notices to more than sixty businesses. Over five years, they've collected $3.1 million dollars and most of it, $2.3 million, has gone to Chanler for attorneys' fees. So what does Whitney Leeman and her attorney, Clifford Chanler, have to say about all this? Well, not much. They declined an on-camera interview and they sent me this big folder with all sorts of information, but most of it doesn't pertain to the Galco's case. Finally, we talked on the phone, but they said it was off the record. They did say they would answer my questions in writing, so I emailed them fourteen questions, but they never responded. Danny Ginsburg>> Proposition 65 warning: "The materials used as colored decorations -- paint -- on the exterior of these bottles may contain lead and/or cadmium which are. . ." Val Zavala>> Few people are as angry about Proposition 65 lawsuits as Danny Ginsburg. Danny owns a company in Torrance called Real Soda in Real Bottles. He's one of Galco's suppliers. Danny Ginsburg>> We've got the Dog & Suds Root Beer. This is from the Midwest. Val Zavala>> Dog & Suds? Danny Ginsburg>> From the Dog & Suds Root Beer stand (laughter). Val Zavala>> Last September, Danny also got a notice from Leeman and Chanler saying he was in violation of Proposition 65. Danny Ginsburg>> They put you where you're among things that you're not aware of and don't know what to do about and they basically say, "Give me money or it's really going to cost you." Val Zavala>> To comply with the law, Danny posted warning signs, although he feels that litigation and warnings have gotten out of hand in our society. Danny Ginsburg>> So we're done, you know, to the point where people aren't going to read, you know, "Caution: Wet Floor". Oh, I didn't notice. I was looking at the warning of "Bacteria on Elevator Button" sign. And there could be other things too. Like, "Warning: Choking Hazard. Chew Cucumber Before Swallowing". Technically speaking, someone who didn't know any better would go, "Oh" and then bellow that warning had saved their life. But most of us, you know, have enough common sense hopefully to know to chew a cucumber before swallowing it without reading a warning sign. Val Zavala>> All this is not to say that Proposition 65 hasn't done a lot of good. It has. Jeff Isaacs is with the Los Angeles City Attorney's office. He says it was a Proposition 65 lawsuit against Pepsico that kept the soda giant from importing lead-tainted soda bottles from Mexico. And Proposition 65 has helped keep lead-tainted Mexican candy from coming into the United States and many manufacturers have removed toxic chemicals from their products. Jeff Isaacs>> Well, for us as public enforcers, it's a tremendously valuable tool, really a unique tool in the United States that allows us to seek penalties against producers of consumer products that may cause cancer or be otherwise harmful to the consumers' health. Val Zavala>> But he acknowledges that the law has been abused. Jeff Isaacs>> The citizen enforcers have essentially used those notices to extort settlements usually in a small amount for each case, but because there are so many cases that the amount can quickly aggregate to substantial amounts of money. Basically, the threat is that, if you don't settle, we will take you to court and we will tie you up in litigation for a lengthy period of time. Val Zavala>> And, says Isaacs, in some cases, Proposition 65 allows private attorneys to ask for even more than legal fees. Jeff Isaacs>> They might say that this was such a difficult and risky case that the court should double our fees and apply a multiplier of two so that they would be entitled to a million dollars. >> "The problem is bigger than just one store." Val Zavala>> Back at Galco's in Highland Park, John Nese's problem has come to the attention of a neighborhood group. >> "It's not that we're against the proposition. The proposition is a good thing, but what it does to the small business owners is drive them out of business and that's unconscionable." John Nese>> It's important for the people of California to know what's going on and how much money is being sucked out of this state that should be spent in this state to do good things rather than be sucked up by a few so that you could provide them with a cottage industry. That's not what Proposition 65 was all about. Danny Ginsburg>> I love soda in bottles. I've always loved this kind of stuff. That's what I'm about. Not about some lawyers running around going, "Oh, look. I guess he doesn't know about this and we can just go and suck him dry." That's wrong. It's just morally and ethically wrong. Even if technically and legally you can get away with it, it's just wrong. Val Zavala>> There is a clause in Proposition 65 that protects small businesses. It exempts any business with fewer than ten employees. Galco's fluctuates right around nine and ten, so they could still be hit with a lawsuit. We'd like to know what you think about this story. You can go to our blog. Just go to kcet.org and click on the Life and Times Blog. Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times". Val Zavala>> California prisons are in crisis. They're over-crowded and now a judge says he's considering releasing hundreds, if not thousands, of inmates early. Governor Schwarzenegger says they should be the least threatening inmates, the old, the feeble and the sick. But what is life like for elderly inmates and are we better off letting them go? Sam Louie has our story. Sam Louie>> Myrtle Green is seventy-four years old. Her health has deteriorated rapidly during her sixteen year stay in prison. Myrtle Green>> I've had ten operations, three heart attacks, one stroke and I'm hard of hearing. Sam Louie>> Green was sentenced to twenty-five years to life for conspiracy to commit murder in 1989. She denies the charges saying she was set up by her daughter's ex-boyfriend. Myrtle Green>> It is the matter of my daughter's ex-boyfriend naming me as the one who asked him to kill someone instead of him telling the truth that it was his dope dealer that asked him to kill someone. Sam Louie>> Green also feels that, given her age and condition, there is no reason why she should have to serve out her entire sentence in prison. Myrtle Green>> Can you tell me what threat to public safety a seventy-four year old, medically disabled person who could barely run -- I have difficulties getting down here when they say get down -- I fail to see what threat I would be to society. If they feel that I am a threat to society, take me out of the prison system, put me in a halfway house, put an ankle bracelet on me, check every move I make and save themselves millions of dollars. Sam Louie>> Norma Jean Jackson agrees. She's spent thirty of her seventy-five years at the California Institution for Women after she was convicted of murder. Norma Jean Jackson>> I remember picking up the scalpel to shut her up. She had said she was having a relationship with the man that I was living with and I killed her. I completely blacked out and killed her. Sam Louie>> Jackson's sentence is seven years to life, but her life has turned into watching the years go by and the hard time is taking its toll. Jackson looks healthy, but she shows me more than ten different prescription drugs she must take every day. [Film Clip] Sam Louie>> The state spends an average of ninety thousand dollars a year to incarcerate an older inmate. Costs are even higher for those with significant health problems like Myrtle Green. Myrtle Green>> They spent over two million, five hundred thousand dollars in medical care for me alone. Dodie Barnes>> "Who's Watch Commander? Who's on tonight?" Sam Louie>> As the Chief Deputy Warden at the California Institution for Women, Dodie Barnes is all too familiar with the challenges of housing older inmates. Dodie Barnes>> The warden has attempted to provide them with extra accommodations like the double mattresses, two blankets, two pillows, more bunks because as they age, they're not able to get obviously on the top bunk. Sam Louie>> And there are other factors that contribute to the higher cost of older inmates, like special meals geared to their diets and added costs for transportation and security if an inmate is hospitalized. Dodie Barnes>> If they go out on an emergency situation or they go out for a period of time, it's required that we have two correctional officers assigned to that unit for basic supervision because they are felons. Sam Louie>> Ever since California's Three Strikes law took effect in 1994, the number of inmates over fifty years old has nearly tripled. As a result, some critics feel California's correctional facilities are quickly turning into nursing homes for prisoners. In 1994, the number of older inmates in the state hovered at around five thousand. Now it has mushroomed to more than sixteen thousand, becoming the fastest growing population within the prison system. Gloria Romero>> To date, in 2005, we are already at where they predicted five years ago we would be in the year 2020. We're there now. This tells me that the numbers are coming at us faster than even our own corrections officials predicted, so it's a state of crisis. Sam Louie>> State Senator Gloria Romero chairs a prison oversight committee on the California legislature. She says the current $7.4 billion dollar budget for the state's prison system continues to grow with no end in sight. Gloria Romero>> In a sense, the corrections budget is almost like this black hole and it's sucking in more and more of our taxpayer dollars, but we're not getting the results that we should get in running a successful program. Sam Louie>> As a result, she says other vital public services are being neglected such as transportation, education and health care. To cut costs, Romero favors early release for older inmates no longer considered a threat to society. Gloria Romero>> There are many inmates who I believe, and I think experts will tell us, having studied this in the field, that certainly by a certain age an inmate is less likely to rob us of our physical well-being and more likely to simply rob us of the fiscal necessity of keeping them there. Sam Louie>> In addition, Romero is also a champion of reforming the Three Strikes legislation by clarifying and changing the definition of the third strike. Gloria Romero>> What we're finding today is that about sixty percent of that third striker who's coming into the California Department of Corrections is coming in for a nonviolent third strike. And even more so exacerbating the problem is that over fifty percent of these three strikers coming in are over the age of fifty-five. Sam Louie>> But victims rights advocates disagree. Lawanda Hawkins is with Crime Victims United of California. Lawanda Hawkins>> It's like victimizing the victims again and the family of the victims. To dare them, after the judge has sentenced them, someone else comes along and says, oh, well, he did good or because of his age, or anything, I think that he should be released a little bit earlier than the time that the judge has already sentenced him for. No. How dare they? Sam Louie>> She also feels changing the Three Strikes law would send the wrong message to criminals. Lawanda Hawkins>> Going into somebody else's home? That is serious. Taking someone else's car? Those things are serious. They're just as serious as these other crimes. You have people trying to minimize them. They're not to be minimized. Sam Louie>> Even if nobody was hurt? Lawanda Hawkins>> Even if no one was hurt. That's a serious crime. You intimidated another human being. Sam Louie>> And while the debate rages, inmates like Norma Jean Jackson and Myrtle Green accept the likelihood of living out their lives in prison and society accepts the costs of supporting their long incarceration. I'm Sam Louie for Life and Times. Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address: Life and Times 4401 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, California 90027 You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org. Val Zavala>> Californians have become pretty good recyclers, but I'd bet you've never thought about recycling keys, as in typewriter keys. Well, Jenny Brandt of Los Feliz has, and take a look at what she's done. [Film Clip] Jenny Brandt>> It is a dark green 1993 Subaru Impreza and it is colored with multi-colored computer keys, like one giant mobile keyboard. Val Zavala>> Do you have any idea how many keys are there? Jenny Brandt>> I think there are about twenty thousand, but that's just a guess. Val Zavala>> How did this whole project begin? Jenny Brandt>> The project began when I got hold of a bunch of extra of these keys from the company that my father worked for and that company made teletype machines way back in the day before the fax machine. When the fax machine first started getting popular, these telex machines became really outdated. They had hundreds of thousands of these extra keys in all these crazy colors and I just knew that they were ripe for something. The question I get most often is, "How long did this take you?" That's a tough one to answer because it was on and off, on and off, mostly off, for about four years. We started in 1994. We did one stripe down the side and I drove around with it like that for a few years until we had an art car show coming up and really got motivated to finish. When we did the second car, Barb's car, I think we figured out it was about ten to fifteen man days. We had a crew of four or five people several times, so it went a lot faster and we finished that one over a period of a couple of months. [Film Clip] Barbara Johns>> Well, Mike and Jenny did their car and, for years, they were looking for somebody else who wanted to do their car and I think they had some interest from people, but never a commitment. Val Zavala>> How often do these things fall off? Barbara Johns>> They don't fall off very often at all. They're actually -- surprisingly, they stay on pretty well. On the first car, they didn't use as much caulking, so there's more missing. But on this one, I just caked it on. I just used about sixty tubes of this stuff. Val Zavala>> What was your husband's motivation to doing it? Jenny Brandt>> I enslaved him into helping me (laughter). We started working on the car pretty much when we first got together. I had done the first path and he was just really interested in it from the get-go. Now he's the one that drives it every day. Val Zavala>> So what's the strangest reaction you've got or your most negative? Jenny Brandt>> The funniest reaction was when we were driving down Sunset Boulevard and a woman pulled up her top. She flashed us (laughter). She liked the car that much. Val Zavala>> Your husband must have liked that (laughter). Jenny Brandt>> I guess (laughter). Val Zavala>> Maybe that's why he drives the car. Jenny Brandt>> He just thought it was kind of strange. Yeah, he drives it every day, so he hasn't told me about anything else in that direction. Val Zavala>> So have you ever been stopped by a cop? Barbara Johns>> Not for this (laughter). I've never been stopped by a police officer just for having the car like this. But I have been stopped for traffic violations and did not get out of the ticket. [Film Clip] Jenny Brandt>> The worst part of driving an art car is that you can't really pick your nose on the freeway. Somebody is always looking at you and there is nowhere to hide (laughter). I think, on a serious note, I wanted to take something that was destined for the trash heap and re-purpose it and re-use it. There was something that spoke to me about technology being outdated so quickly. The fax machine came in and, all of a sudden, these thousands and thousands of pounds of plastic for the fax machine's predecessor were garbage essentially. You know, technology moves so quickly. So there's something about taking that technology and literally gluing it on a car where it moves through space and time and it was kind of interesting to me. Barbara Johns>> I would like to figure that it's an easy car to sell, so I'd like to sell it actually. Val Zavala>> How many miles do you have on it? Barbara Johns>> It's got about ninety-five thousand miles on it. Val Zavala>> That's not bad. What kind of car is it actually underneath all this? Barbara Johns>> This is a Mitsubishi Galant and red. You know, it's held up really well, but the tires don't last as long. They last about half as long. That's my experience. I've had to get them changed every thirty-five thousand miles instead of every -- Val Zavala>> -- that's not because of this? Barbara Johns>> Because of the weight of the car. Val Zavala>> The weight? The keys are that much weight? Barbara Johns>> The keys add a couple hundred pounds. Val Zavala>> You're kidding. Barbara Johns>> It's like driving around four people all the time. Plus, when you actually have four people, it's like driving around eight people. Jenny Brandt>> The whole hood is covered with car ad slogans, some of them from as far back as probably the twenties and thirties up to the present. "In a realm all its own." "Take the wheel." "Everybody looks, everybody loves." "Oldsmobile rockets ahead." They sound so fifties, don't they? We also get a lot of notes on the car from people just kind of complimenting us or saying what an inspiration we were. But eventually, it's going to be time to get another car and I thought about how to sell it. I sort of joked with a car salesman on the lot about trading it in and what they think of that and get some looks of shock and dismay (laughter). So I don't know what their reaction would be there or whether anyone would want to buy it, but I hope so. Val Zavala>> And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Sponsored in part by:  | |
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