For decades, Proposition 65 enforcement has been dogged by a familiar accusation: private enforcers are abusing the statute. The phrase usually arrives with ritual solemnity, as though saying “bounty hunter” loudly enough can substitute for evidence. Now the Appellate Court reversed this course.

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The most serious distortion in Proposition 65 litigation is not private enforcement. It is the defense-side effort to recast the statute’s self-funding mechanism as misconduct, while simultaneously making the cases so scientifically expensive that a rare self-funded enforcement can survive.

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That is the structural truth defendants prefer to bury: Proposition 65 enforcement works because the statute allows private enforcers to recover fees when they vindicate the public interest. Without that mechanism, serious cases involving lead, cadmium, mercury, arsenic, and other listed chemicals would collapse under their own scientific cost. Toxicology is not cheap. Exposure modeling is not free. Analytical chemistry, epidemiology, biostatistics, NHANES/FNDDS dietary modeling, safe-harbor analysis, and expert gatekeeping do not pay for themselves by civic optimism.

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The “abusive enforcer” story also depends on pretending modern Proposition 65 litigation is simple. It is not.

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A modern Prop 65 case is not “send a notice, collect a check.” It is a scientific excavation with a 1000-item deep docked. In recent enforcement litigation, plaintiff-side counsel studied the work of ninety-six experts to identify six of the best and most cited in the world. Examination of only two defense experts consumed trial time from February through April. That is not a shakedown. That is a trench war conducted with tens of thousands of pages of peer-reviewed articles, exposure models, and months-long cross-examination.

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This matters because appellate courts are beginning to say aloud what defense rhetoric has long obscured. Recent opinions have accepted the central complexity point: modern Proposition 65 cases are not routine label disputes. They are expert-driven public-health cases requiring substantial scientific proof. The warning label may be short; the evidentiary path to determine whether it was required is not.

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The same opinions also provide a necessary correction to the stale “bounty hunter” smear. Early-2000s cases used language sharply critical of some enforcement practices. Defense lawyers have treated that rhetoric as an heirloom weapon, dragging it into modern cases regardless of the record. But rhetoric is not evidence, and nostalgia is not a legal standard.

The critical modern course correction is this:

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“Those early 2000’s cases said what they said, the especially colorful Consumer Defense Group case chastising counsel at length with criticism after criticism, to the point it set aside a settlement. But whatever the state of affairs in the early 2000’s, there is nothing in the record to support that attorneys are currently misusing or abusing the situation for the purpose of generating attorney fees—and thwarting possible settlement. Indeed, the evidence before us indicates the contrary."

The Chemical Toxin Working Group Inc. v. Best Naturals, Inc. (May 22, 2026, No. A170985) Cal.App.5th..

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That language tells courts and litigants to stop using vintage insults as substitute proof. It rejects the lazy assumption that because some older cases criticized some practices, every modern private enforcer walks into court wearing the same scarlet letter.

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The defense narrative is effective because it is simple. It casts the public-interest plaintiff as the villain and the regulated business as the weary innocent besieged by paperwork. It reframes enforcement as opportunism and noncompliance as victimhood. It is a tidy little morality play, except for the inconvenient facts: the products contain listed chemicals, exposure science is expensive, the public has a right to know what’s in their food, and the statute expressly relies on private enforcement.

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That is the conceptual fraud at the center of the “abuse” argument. Defendants complain that enforcers recover fees, while simultaneously forcing litigation into expert-heavy scientific battles that no nonprofit could afford without fee recovery. First they turn the case into a scientific trench war. Then they complain that someone bought boots.

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The complexity is not theoretical. Proposition 65 cases can involve toxicology, analytical chemistry, epidemiology, biostatistics, dietary exposure modeling, safe-harbor calculations, naturally occurring defenses, bioavailability, detection limits, laboratory methodology, regulatory history, and expert admissibility. In lead-and-cadmium cases, courts may also confront the combined or synergistic effects of multiple chemicals. That is not a form complaint in search of a settlement. That is a full scientific trial.

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The ordinary civil track is often badly suited to that reality. A case may have one plaintiff and one defendant and still require ten scientific experts, tens of thousands of pages of reliance materials, phased trial modules, endless Sargon and Kelly hearings, and dozens of motions in limine. Party headcount is not complexity. Scientific burden is.

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This is why trial courts sometimes get Proposition 65 wrong. Judges are generalists. That is not criticism; it is physics. Proposition 65 is a maze. It is built from statute, regulation, agency guidance, toxicology, exposure science, and burden-shifting rules. Nobody understands the maze by glancing at it. One learns it by living in it, losing weekends, vacations and relationships to it, and occasionally considering whether section 25821 should be named as an additional family member.

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When trial courts face that maze, they often look to Big Law for a map. Big Law frequently arrives with confidence, polish, and a theory that makes the case appear simple. The problem is that confidence and mastery are not the same thing. A generalist defense team can make a wrong interpretation sound clean, elegant, and inevitable—right up until the appellate court reads the statute.

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That dynamic creates a recurring appellate pattern. The defense offers a simple but erroneous theory. The trial court adopts it. The resulting order appears efficient in the moment but creates a clean question of law for appeal. The result is that the defense builds the appellate ladder in marble and gold, then complains when enforcers climb it.

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One court adopted a defense interpretation of section 25821(b) that would exclude decades of modern science from the safe-harbor analysis, despite regulatory requirements pointing toward use of current science in risk assessment. The practical consequence was to preclude plaintiff experts in toxicology, epidemiology, biostatistics, NHANES/FNDDS, exposure assessment, and risk modeling. As trial rulings go, that may prove less a defense victory than an gift basket for the enforcers.

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The deeper lesson is not that trial courts are malicious. It is that complex public-health statutes require records built for review. When a trial court accepts an overconfident defense theory, the task for enforcement counsel is not theatrical outrage. It is preservation. Build the record. Make every argument. Offer the science. Force the court to confront the regulation. If the court does not, let them run into the wall the defense so overconfidently drives them into.

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This is why the smear campaign against enforcers is not just unfair; it is functionally dangerous. It invites courts to distrust the very parties the statute depends on to enforce public-health protections. It encourages defendants to treat fee recovery as suspect while using litigation tactics that make fee recovery indispensable. It substitutes character attack for statutory analysis.

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If defendants want fewer fees, they can offer fewer frivolous theories. If they want simpler cases, they can stop pretending exposure modeling is a parlor trick. If they want less litigation, they can warn, reformulate, test, disclose, and comply.

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Until then, the antique “bounty hunter” routine should be retired. It has done enough laps around the courthouse.

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Modern Proposition 65 enforcement is not a racket because defendants dislike paying fees. It is a public-interest enforcement system operating in cases where the science is expensive, the defendants are well funded, and the public-health stakes are entrusted to private enforcers by the people because the government failed to protect them.

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The warning label may be small.

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The work behind it is monumental.