Nike, Nike, Shoes on Fire...

Nike is "extremely disappointed" in a California supreme court ruling which says the company can be sued for fraud for claiming that its overseas workers received adequate wages and that its working conditions complied with safety regulations - assertions contradicted by an audit commissioned by Nike itself. The court 's decision states that when a company "makes factual representations about its own products or its own operations, it must speak truthfully." Nike responded that the court's decision "sets a dangerous precedent." Liberal New York Times columnist Bob Herbert agrees. "Now there is no doubt that Nike has wrung billions and billions of dollars from the toil and the sweat and in some cases the physical abuse of impoverished workers - mostly women - in places like China and Vietnam and Indonesia," he writes. But Herbert worries that the ruling will "make some companies reluctant to vigorously defend themselves in the court of public opinion. That is not a good thing."