March 30, 2004

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  Treasury Department Slips on Ladders

  
  

  By Jonathan Nicholson
  

  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It was the anecdote that politically seemed too good to be true. And it was. Treasury Secretary John Snow was set to say on Friday that "frivolous lawsuits" had caused the U.S. ladder industry to fold.
  

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

  "There is not a single company left in the United States that makes ladders. The lawsuits got to be too much for the ladder industry," read comments Snow prepared for a conference sponsored by the Small Business Administration.
  

  
  

  But when the department discovered there were some 11 producers selling $850 million worth of ladders in the United States, those words were left unspoken and deleted from a speech text posted later on the department's Web site.

  
  

   

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