By admin 
A fierce lobbying effort against a California bill aiming to go after monopolies is underway as the Legislature enters its final month of work.
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The California Chamber of Commerce, a major business trade group, and California Life Sciences, an organization representing biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, recently launched new video advertisements against Assembly Bill 1776, a measure that would expand what state law deems as anti-competitive behavior. The new campaigns add to what was already one of the Capitol’s most hotly contested bills.
The 30-second video from the CalChamber warns viewers that the measure could raise prices for Californians and make it harder for small businesses to operate in the state. It has more than 1.7 million views on YouTube since it published last week.
The organization has a seven-figure budget for its statewide effort, spokesperson John Myers said in a statement. He declined to provide more specific financial numbers on how much the group plans to spend.
“Its sweeping changes would hurt consumers and vital sectors alike,” he said.
Majority leader authored bill
Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, D-Winters, argues the bill she authored is about protecting the customers and small businesses that opponents say it will hurt by creating a new tool to go after companies that take steps to swallow up or shut out competition. Courts have found that the state’s main antitrust law, the Cartwright Act, does not clearly prohibit actions by a single company to try and exclude rivals or treat them differently.
That could include a business using techniques such as targeting pricing to try and weaken or drive out certain rivals from the market. The California Law Revision Commission, a state agency that studies laws and recommends changes, on regulating single-company conduct the “most glaring deficiency in the Cartwright Act.”
Aguiar-Curry said in a statement Wednesday the bill is meant to protect thousands of businesses from a handful of dominant companies.
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“We haven’t gotten a good-faith effort from California’s business associations on AB 1776,” she said. “We’ve spent dozens of hours asking for their input in meeting after meeting on how to better protect innocent parties under the bill. But instead of providing meaningful feedback, they’re making claims that simply don’t match the facts.”
Senate Appropriations will decide bill’s next step
The advertising campaign against the bill comes as it faces a key vote next month in the Senate Appropriations Committee, where controversial measures are often killed through a largely secretive process. It made it out of the Judiciary Committee before legislators left for a summer recess despite concerns among opponents and lawmakers about who could bring lawsuits, if the bill passes by an Aug. 31 deadline.
Under the current version of the measure, both individuals and businesses would be able to sue companies. The CalChamber advertisement claims that small businesses would be crushed by lawsuits, and the video from California Life Sciences warns that medical clinical trials would be suspended, and treatment denied to Californians facing serious illnesses, because of legal fights.
“A bill like this, it provides such legal risk to the venture capital community that they will not invest in biotech startups in California when there’s threat of litigation that could upend decades of research and work to get a product to market and to patients,” said Sam Chung, a government relations official for the life sciences organization.
Supporters of the bill say that allowing companies to sue under the measure will allow the businesses the chance to recover money or other compensation for being harmed by certain behavior. Loyal Terry, a lobbyist for Economic Security California Action, an organization that wants to confront “consolidated corporate power” said getting rid of that option would throw “small businesses under the bus.”
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Overall, Terry said he is flattered by the ad campaigns against the measure.
“It means we’re doing something right.”