July 12, 2005 08:00 AM UTC

Lynn Hefley Gets Stuck in NY Times Story

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• by: Colorado Pols

This story is from last week, but we’ve had it on ice (meaning we forgot to post on it) until tonight. The Hefley clan – Congressman Joel Hefley and his wife, Colorado State Representative Lynn Hefley ended up in a bad light in a recent NY Times article (free login required) about the fast food industry and its successful lobbying efforts.

Here’s some excerpts from the NY Times article, which deals with the fast food industry lobbying in the wake of lawsuits being filed by people who accused businesses such as McDonald’s of making them fat:

Food and restaurant companies, fearing they would be hammered with enormous judgments, as the tobacco industry was, immediately began fighting back, waging an aggressive campaign to make it impossible for anyone to sue them successfully for causing obesity or obesity-related health problems.

Almost three years later, they have had astounding success. Twenty states have enacted versions of a “commonsense consumption” law. They vary slightly in substance, but all prevent lawsuits seeking personal injury damages related to obesity from ever being tried in their courts. Another 11 states have similar legislation pending.

Although plaintiffs’ lawyers are confident there are ways around the new state laws, the measures, along with a class-action overhaul bill President Bush signed into law this year, will probably make it harder for lawyers in obesity cases to win the kind of large awards seen in tobacco cases.

This is good or bad, depending on your perspective, but as the story turns to the lobbying effort itself, the foreshadowing is obvious:

The National Restaurant Association, based in Washington, and its 50 state organizations, which represent large chains like McDonald’s and small independent businesses, led the campaign. In most states, lobbyists for food companies and restaurants helped write the legislation and did much of the legwork in state capitols.

Restaurant owners and food company executives personally visited state lawmakers, testified at hearings and steered campaign contributions to pivotal lawmakers. Executives from Kraft and Coca-Cola showed up in Texas, for instance, to lobby for that state’s commonsense consumption bill, which was signed into law by Gov. Rick Perry last month.

According to data from the Institute on Money in State Politics, a nonpartisan research group based in Helena, Mont., in the 2002 and 2004 election cycles, the food and restaurant industry gave a total of $5.5 million to politicians in the 20 states that have passed laws shielding companies from obesity liability.

Adoption of commonsense consumption laws by almost half the states reveals how an organized and impassioned lobbying effort, combined with a receptive legislative climate, can quickly alter the legal framework on a major public health issue like obesity.

So what’s that have to do with Colorado, you ask? The Hefley’s apparently got involved…

In Colorado, Pete Meersman, president and chief executive of the Colorado Restaurant Association, started pushing for an obesity lawsuit bill after attending a conference organized by the National Restaurant Association in July 2003. The conference gathered executives from all 50 state organizations; the looming threat of more obesity litigation was a central topic.

“We wanted to make sure that frivolous lawsuits like this never made it to the discovery stage, which is where these things get expensive for businesses,” said Mr. Meersman, referring to Pelman and an earlier lawsuit filed by the same lawyer that also named KFC, Burger King and Wendy’s as defendants.

Acting on behalf of members ranging from Arby’s to Fatty’s Pizza, Mr. Meersman sprang into action. After several preliminary talks with state legislators, a lucky break came in September 2003 during a visit to Washington. Mr. Meersman had scheduled a meeting for himself and 20 restaurant executives with Representative Joel Hefley, a longtime Republican congressman from Colorado Springs, to talk about various legislative issues. Mr. Hefley’s wife, Lynn, a representative in Colorado’s state legislature, happened to be in her husband’s Capitol Hill office. When the subject turned to obesity lawsuits, her ears perked up.

First of all, we don’t have a lot of sympathy for a restaurant that names itself “Fatty’s Pizza” being upset when people say their pies make them fat. Is that really the best name you could have come up with for your restaurant? But we digress…

She was quite vocal about it,” Mr. Meersman recalled. “She couldn’t believe this kind of stuff was going on, people suing companies for making them fat.” After that meeting, Mrs. Hefley signed on as an ardent sponsor of Colorado’s commonsense consumption bill.

But her office did not draft the legislation. That job went to Mr. Meersman, who spent several weeks coming up with the right language. When he completed a first draft, he showed it to Mrs. Hefley, who added some wording on personal responsibility. He also solicited the views of companies like Outback Steakhouse and Texas Roadhouse, which gave their approval.

Mr. Meersman later added language to prevent someone from claiming that the continued consumption of a food caused not just obesity, but also cancer, diabetes or other such chronic illness. Mr. Meersman also testified in the bill’s favor, arguing that obesity lawsuits would do nothing but cost companies a lot of money and clog up the courts. The bill passed in May 2004 by a vote of 60 to 3 in the Colorado House and 33 to 2 in the state Senate.

While Mr. Meersman and Mr. Foulkes see this as good old-fashioned lobbying, some critics say the process is flawed. “It’s unnerving to think that public laws are being crafted by corporate interests that simply hand language over to a lawmaker to insert in a bill,” said Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics. “These bills are intended to protect the industry, not the public.”

It’s a little unfair to single out Lynn Hefley for this, because a great deal of state legislators will readily admit that several of the bills they sponsor are written by lobbyists and outside interests. Still, the criticism of the process is probably valid, and it’s bum luck for the Hefleys that they ended up as the example in the story.