Yesterday, CPSC Chairman Elliot Kaye and Commissioner Robert Adler issued a lengthy joint statement vigorously defending the Commission’s current approach to civil penalties against various criticisms voiced by Commissioners Joe Mohorovic and Ann Marie Buerkle as well as stakeholders in the business community.  Their overarching message: such criticisms are without merit and are, in reality, a call for lesser penalties; there will be no change in the Commission’s current approach.

Over the past few months, we have written about the Commission’s approach to seeking civil penalties against companies for failure to report violations—and the ongoing debate surrounding that process. 

According to Kaye and Adler, “agency critics have urged an enormous undertaking by the Commission to prioritize exploring and redesigning its civil penalty system, effectively displacing work intended to save lives and prevent injuries.”  They expressed disappointment at the “distortion” of Chairman Kaye’s remarks at the ICPHSO conference last year, and pushed back at the idea that the Commission somehow operates without transparency when assessing civil penalties.  Specifically, Kaye and Adler assert the following points in their joint statement against the common civil penalty criticisms:

• critics of the Commission’s current policy want more information shared related to the facts and factors that enter civil penalty valuations, but hamstring the agency in doing so by seeking (or supporting) stringent Section 6(b) confidentiality protections;

• there is ample regulatory guidance to determine when to file a Section 15(b) report;

• both the Commission and companies need flexibility when negotiating a civil penalty settlement, thus counseling against a matrix or formulaic approach to applying the civil penalty factors;

• companies are afforded full due process protections and procedures when the Commission seeks civil penalties including the opportunity to be heard; and

• the Commission carefully tracks the information available to firms at each and every step in time and does not rely on hindsight regarding companies’ obligation to file.

While many could find much to dispute in the joint statement, the Commission’s majority has made their view clear.

Companies should take a very close read of this policy statement.  It is now evident that the Commission will not change—or even revisit—its current approach to civil penalties in the coming fiscal year, as urged by some stakeholders in the product safety community.  Barring a change in CPSC personnel, Congressional action, or judicial involvement through the litigation process, the ongoing “debate” over civil penalties has effectively ended for now.