Contractor arrested over pool death

Although the trend in the United States in recent years has been towards weaker protections for consumers from dangerous products, once in a while something happens that's so outrageous that there's almost a consensus that action has to be taken.

Last year, a 6-year-old boy in Connecticut drowned when he was trapped under water by a swimming pool drain. Faulty drains have long been a national scandal: In the past 25 years, there have been dozens of instances in the U.S. of children being killed or having their intestines literally sucked out by dangerous drains.

The contractor who installed that pool has now been arrested on manslaughter charges for the boy's death. This is the first time a pool contractor has been arrested in the U.S. for violating pool safety codes. Perhaps this is a sign that authorities - at least in Connecticut - aren't going to let tragic deaths slide. The arrest may signal to other contractors that they have to make their pools safe.

But it took until the end of last year for Congress to act. In December, the federal government finally enacted a law regulating pool drain covers. When the Contact With America era began, Congress wasted no time in revoking college aid from students who got caught with a joint when they were 15 - but it took another 13 years to pass a law to protect consumers from faulty products like pool drains.

Incidentally, Freeper types are abusing other websites to attack the family of the boy who drowned in Connecticut. I'm surprised the new federal law passed, because the corporatists' world is one of "buyer beware", in which victims of defective products are told to just keep quiet. The right-wing propagandists who infest the blogosphere have long claimed that anyone who files a legitimate product liability suit is just trying to cash in. They consider product safety regulation a "communist" constraint on their so-called right to Make Money.

The tort "reform" movement is all about protecting corporations from having to pay victims of their faulty wares.

The Connecticut contractor is expected to plead not guilty. But the fact that authorities did go after him may be a sign that Connecticut is serious about enforcing safety regulations. Many American locales would have let the case slide.

(Source: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3404580)