Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman Tom McClintock Representing the 4th District of California
Washington, D.C. – HR 5437, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Stone Slab Products Act, has passed the House Judiciary Committee.
Congressman McClintock’s remarks delivered at the hearing in support of the legislation:
Opening Statement
HR 5437 (McClintock) – Protection of Lawful Commerce in Stone Slab Products Act
Video Link
June 3, 2026
Mr. Chairman:
This legislation addresses a fundamental question of fairness in our civil justice system: who should be held responsible when workplace safety laws are violated? Who is liable when an otherwise safe product is misused? The party that responsibly, safely and legally manufactured that product or the party that dangerously, recklessly and illegally mis-used that product and injured workers as a result?
The answer should be self-evident to any fair and reasonable person.
Stone slabs are used for kitchen and bathroom countertops in millions of American homes. Stone slab manufacture produces $30 billion a year for our economy, and employs 100,000 American workers who depend upon it to feed their families. When these stone slabs leave the factory, they are entirely safe as long as they are then fabricated according to health and safety laws.
These products are then shipped to fabricators to be cut to fit your kitchen. The manufacturers have no control over the fabricators – fabricators are completely unrelated and independent businesses. Those fabricators are required by law to use safe processes to cut these slabs to assure that harmful silica particles aren’t released into the air. If inhaled, these particles can cause debilitating and permanent lung damage – a condition called silicosis.
OSHA has established detailed standards governing exposure to respirable crystalline silica. Employers are required to implement engineering controls, provide protective equipment, conduct monitoring, and train workers. States such as California have adopted additional requirements.
Most fabricators abide by the law and employ these practices to protect their workers. Unfortunately, there are some sweat shops that ignore health, safety, labor and immigration laws to undercut their competition. Instead of obeying the law and using state of the art equipment to prevent silica dust, they simply have their workers dry-cut these slabs, releasing silica particles that injure their workers.
So who is responsible for these injuries? The manufacturer who obeyed all the laws, who safely manufactured the slab, and had no control over the fabrication process once their product left their factory — or the fabricator who broke all the applicable safety and labor laws and ordered their workers to expose themselves to injury. According to some unscrupulous trial lawyers, it’s the innocent manufacturer who should be held liable.
We are now seeing crippling lawsuits that ignore the guilty fabricators and instead sue the manufacturers – because that’s where the money is. This doesn’t protect workers – indeed, it imperils a new class of workers – every one of those 100,000 Americans employed in safe manufacture of this product.
And that is because this litigation threatens to shut down American stone slab manufacturers.
Some say, “Good,” or as the socialist mayor of Seattle recently giggled, “Bye.”
One hundred thousand American workers lose their jobs. $30 billion of the American economy vanishes. But at least we protect the workers in the unscrupulous fabrication shops, right? But we don’t of course. Stone slab manufacture will simply shift to foreign suppliers who are beyond the reach of this litigation and the fabricators will remain.
If you truly care about the workers, you would protect the innocent and hold the guilty responsible for violating health and safety laws. That’s what this bill does.
It preserves workers’ rights to seek relief from those who caused their injuries, while preventing abusive litigation against parties who neither created the hazard nor controlled the workplace. It says that manufacturers and sellers of stone slab products cannot be sued for injuries arising from fabrication activities conducted beyond their control by another party. It does not eliminate workplace safety laws. It does not shield employers who violate OSHA requirements. It does not prevent workers from seeking remedies against those responsible for unsafe working conditions. It simply prevents liability from being imposed on parties that neither controlled nor caused the alleged harm.
At its core, this legislation reaffirms a principle that should unite all of us regardless of party: liability should be based on responsibility. Those who cause harm should be held accountable. Those who don’t should not.
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Statement Video Link