Lawyers’ Interest Is Not Paramount

If tomorrow was Jan. 1, 2000, some of the world’s computer systems and electronic devices would stop working correctly at the stroke of midnight. Financial institutions, transportation networks, telecommunication, military systems, medical equipment, commercial inventory systems, power grids and more could fail in a catastrophic chain reaction of computer crashes.

Yes, it sounds improbable. However, that’s what experts have predicted in testimony before Congress this year, in what has to be one of the more scandalously underreported stories of the decade.

The problem is with a widespread software programmer’s shortcut; when the internal clocks in some electronic devices advance the year to “00,” the equipment malfunctions.

For the first time in the computer industry’s history, it confronts a deadline that cannot be extended. There might be time to meet it but there’s no time for delay.

Repairs cannot proceed, however, unless everyone who needs to make them can find out what needs fixing and how to do it.

This creates an urgent need for information sharing. But without some help from a bill now pending in Congress, the needed information sharing will not occur.

Here’s why:

Software and equipment makers are under siege, with customers demanding to know whether products will work and how they can be fixed. According to testimony before Congress, lawyers have been advising these manufacturers to be guarded about what they admit, lest it be used against them later in an expected avalanche of lawsuits.

This leaves organizations, especially medium-sized and smaller businesses, in a terrible predicament. Many smaller organizations do not employ staffs of the sophisticated technicians needed to identify and test their systems for Y2K readiness. The information they need may be available, but they can’t get it.

The solution is the Year 2000 Information Disclosure Act. It provides that when companies share the needed information, their statements cannot later be used against them in a lawsuit or antitrust proceeding. Also, the bill would create a national Internet site for the sharing of reputable Y2K information. The proposal has support from both Democrats and Republicans, from President Clinton and from a broad coalition of U.S. industries.

Only one group is opposed: trial lawyers, who are drooling over the potential for lucrative lawsuits. In view of the global chaos that could ensue without the needed repairs, the lawyers’ greed should be brushed aside.

Congress must pass this bill, promptly, while there’s still time for the predicted Y2K disaster to be prevented.