One of the longest running Unfair Competition Law cases ever has finally been brought to an end -- maybe.
The saga of Benson v. Kwikset began in 2000 and ricocheted between trial courts and the 4th District Court of Appeal in Orange County until a decision a few weeks back.
In a just-published article John H. Sullivan, CJAC's president, tracks the case's journey --before and after voters approved Proposition 64 in 2004 -- and recalls the facts and appellate opinion that made it a poster child for the shakedown lawsuits that the CJAC-sponsored initiative shut down. You can read the article and Appellate Justice David Sills' cut-to-the-chase description of the shakedown gambit in the March 25th Daily Journal legal newspaper on the CJAC web site.
Kwikset was sued by former class action plaintiffs' lawyer Williams Lerach's firm for selling "Made in the USA" locks with screws made in Taiwan. (As Sullivan notes, Lerach, just beginning the second year of a two-year federal prison term for illegally paying class action clients, has become far more familiar with locks than he ever could have imagined when his lawyers first went after Kwikset.)
Proposition 64 brought to the Unfair Competition Law the common sense requirement that a private plaintiff bringing an unfair competition/consumer protection lawsuit must have incurred "injury in fact and lost money or property" to have standing before the court.
The Kwikset case is notable for providing some of the best judicial arguments for fixing the Unfair Competition Law's non-existent standing rule. Justice Sills' observations, Sullivan writes, "are more relevant than ever today as some plaintiffs' lawyers, evidently addressing a shortage of legitimate plaintiffs, are attempting to recast Proposition 64 as overkill intended only to squelch" no-name lawyers bringing serial small-stakes shakedown lawsuits.