NFIB/NH Applauds Hassan for Vetoing Vaguely Written Anti-Bullying Bill

Date: July 28, 2014

Concord (July 28, 2014) – Governor Maggie Hassan’s veto this
afternoon of a bill aimed at bullying in the workplace spared small businesses
in New Hampshire from government micromanagement and a potential torrent of
frivolous lawsuits, said the National
Federation of Independent Business (NFIB)
today.

 

“Governor
Hassan has made exactly the right decision for New Hampshire’s small business
community and for the state’s economy,” said NFIB State Director Bruce Berke
“Signing the bill would have been the easy thing to do.  She did the right thing instead and that’s great
to see in politics these days.”

 

The
bill, HB 591, was intended to protect employers from being bullied at work, a
goal that virtually no one opposes.  The
problem, said Berke, is that bullying is so vaguely defined in the legislation
that lots of frivolous lawsuits would have been inevitable.

 

“The
only people who have benefited from this bill would have been trial lawyers,”
he said.  “This bill would have made
every-day decisions and ordinary employee relations much riskier for small
business owners.”

 

Being
dragged into court is one of the biggest financial risks for small businesses,
most of whom don’t have in-house attorneys or deep pockets for cases that could
drag on for months and sometimes years.

 

“One
lawsuit can wipe out a small business even if the owner is completely without
fault,” said Berke.  “Even if you’re
exonerated in court you still have to pay legal fees that could run into the
tens of thousands of dollars.  This bill
would have made that risk higher and it would have done very little, if
anything, to prevent real workplace bullying.

 

“NFIB
applauds Governor Hassan’s veto today and her acknowledgment that the bill was
poorly worded for future relations between employees and employers.”

 

Learn
more about NFIB at www.nfib.com.

 

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