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Document 39 of 67.

Copyright 1998 Information Access Company,
a Thomson Corporation Company;
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Copyright 1998 Fairchild Publications Inc.
Footwear News

July 6, 1998

SECTION: No. 27, Vol. 54; Pg. 2; ISSN: 0162-914X

IAC-ACC-NO: 20912563

LENGTH: 596 words

HEADLINE: NIKE YELLS 'FOUL,' CITES FIRST AMENDMENT SAYS SAN FRANCISCO SUIT SEEKS TO 'HANDCUFF' SNEAKER FIRM FROM DEFENDING ITS IMAGE.

BYLINE: Malone, Scott

BODY:
NEW YORK -- Nike Inc. last week sought a California court to order a stay of a suit filed against it by a San Francisco activist regarding the company's treatment of Asian factory workers. The Beaverton, Ore.,-based company said the suit concerns statements that are protected by the First Amendment, which guarantees the right to free speech.

In the suit, filed in April, Mark Kasky called some of Nike's recent statements that its factory workers are not mistreated "deceitful," and charged that those statements violated California truth-in-advertising laws. Nike requested the stay to have time to prepare its argument to have the suit dismissed.

Nike spokesman Vada Manager asked, "Why should we be handcuffed or unduly restrained from defending ourselves with what we believe to be accurate and true?"

Nike's motion, filed June 29 in California Superior Court in San Francisco, said Kasky's suit "seeks to stifle Nike's constitutional rights to speak out and respond on an issue that is the subject of much public debate and concern," and adds that the suit is based "on statements by Nike that are protected by the First Amendment."

Alan Caplan, an attorney with the firm Bushnell, Caplan & Fielding LLP., representing Kasky, responded, "The First Amendment, freedom of speech, does not give you the right to misrepresent anything to the public. They are not going to hide behind the First Amendment. In this case it does not even apply."

In its motion, Nike also argued that Kasky is seeking an unreasonable amount of documentation on wage issues. The company said his request would entail more than 46.8 million records related to at least 520,000 workers working over seven-and-a-half years in 27 countries.

Manager told FN the cost of producing that much documentation would be "about $ 10.5 million to produce and mail from Asia to the courts...and we find that onerous." In its motion, Nike called the request "economic extortion" and said of plaintiff Kasky, "He wants Nike to line plaintiff's counsels' pockets with fee money."

Of those claims, Kasky's attorney Caplan said, "They've never called us to discuss what we're requesting, they're exaggerating what we're requesting."

He said Nike's estimate of the number of documents Kasky is seeking is "inaccurate," and while he could not offer a specific figure on the number of documents he was seeking, he estimated that it was in "the hundreds of thousands."

He continued, "At this point, we're looking for only the documents from three countries," which are Indonesia, China and Vietnam. He called Nike's comments on the cost of providing the documentation, "another way of responding to the lawsuit instead of responding to the facts."

Nike said Kasky's suit was a "misuse" of California Business and Professional Code Sections 17200 and 17500, which are intended to protect consumers from false advertising.

Kasky's attorney said, "The law is used constantly in false representation and misrepresentation cases," and said of California consumers, "if they knew the true facts about how these shoes are made, they would probably buy another brand."

Along with his suit, Kasky filed a series of 36 supporting exhibits, ranging from Nike statements, to the 1997 Ernst & Young report on factory conditions, to media reports and pay stubs of Nike factory workers. But Kasky has not commented on whether he or anyone associated with him has been in Nike factories.

"We're not going to answer questions about the case," Caplan said. "Everything's going to come out in court."

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

IAC-CREATE-DATE: July 17, 1998

LOAD-DATE: July 20, 1998