The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News
1. LEGAL
A court in Florida overturns a massive $145 billion verdict against several tobacco companies.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Special Projects Counsel Hans Bader on the legal theory behind the decision:
“The Florida Supreme Court has just upheld a state appeals court’s reversal of $145 billion in punitive damages awarded in a class action lawsuit against the big tobacco companies. That overturns the largest punitive damage award by a jury in U.S. history. But it reinstated two multimillion dollar compensatory damage awards to smokers that had been overturned by the appeals court. And it allowed individual smokers to seek compensatory and punitive damages in future lawsuits.”
2. PRIVACY
FBI efforts to upgrade computer security systems face a setback as a hacker uses publicly available software to access Director Robert Mueller’s secret files.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Director of Technology Studies Wayne Crews and Policy Analyst Brooke Oberwetter on how private industry can protect data better than government mandates:
“Government solutions tend to disincentivize honesty and cooperation among industry players in the long term, leading to even greater problems of imperfect information. Intervention can also interfere with prices, meaning a less efficient allocation of resources. In addition to economic inefficiency, regulations can define industry standards down and reduce innovations in the field of cybersecurity, leading to lower levels of security than we have now.”
3. ENVIRONMENT
Federal officials prepare to remove the bald eagle from the official list of threatened and endangered species.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Adjunct Analyst Steven Milloy on the myth of DDT’s threat to bald eagles:
“While the Associated Press acknowledged the fact that bald eagle populations ‘were considered a nuisance and routinely shot by hunters, farmers and fishermen’ – spurring a 1940 federal law protecting bald eagles – the AP underplayed the significance of hunting and human encroachment and erroneously blamed DDT for the eagles’ near demise.”
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