The Data Quality Act

Suddenly receiving much more attention in the courts than in the 1990s, brake manufacturers sought some official recognition of the "controversy" they had attempted to create by sponsoring a flurry of articles re-analyzing the earlier literature.

As luck would have it, business interests had slipped a rider into an appropriations bill in 2001, later anointed the "Data Quality Act." So, in August of 2003, one of the big corporate defense law firms -- Morgan Lewis and Bockius -- moved to have EPA withdraw the "Gold Book" as based on out-of-date science and government regulations.

The lawyers refused to disclose whom they represented to Members of Congress and the media. But an article in Corporate Counsel, "Who Represents America’s Biggest Companies," credited major services by Morgan Lewis to Honeywell. GM was another client of the vast law firm.

(Last year, I met the lawyer who signed the Morgan Lewis letter to EPA, representing another defendant at my deposition in an asbestos case, and I showed him where I had named him in the latest edition of my book on the public health history of asbestos. He just asked me how I knew about General Motors.)