Nike: Running Through the Court System

“Nike in the mid-1990s launched a public relations blitz against charges that its Asian workers were subjected to dangerous chemical exposure, physical abuse and substandard wages. As company officials made public statements ‐‐ such as letters to newspaper editors and sponsors ‐‐ claiming Nike had cleaned up its act, a Nike-commissioned Ernst & Young audit leaked to the public in 1997 indicated the abuses continued.

Marc Kasky sued in 1998 under California's stringent false advertising and unfair business practice laws attacking Nike's responses to attacks that the company used sweatshop labor and exposed Asian workers to chemical exposure. Lower courts...