Advocate's Advance

"The consumer is the victim," pro tests Rhoda Karpatkin. "He -- no, she -- is not respected in the marketplace." Defending the besieged buyer has been a preoccupation of Mrs. Karpatkin, a 43-year-old Manhattan attorney, since she began representing Consumers Union 16 years ago. Now she will make it her full-time occupation, too, as the new executive director of the nonprofit service bureau. She will oversee a staff of 330, extensive product-testing laboratories in sub urban New York, an auto test center hi Connecticut, a law office in Washington, and Consumer Reports, a fact-filled, if plain-Jane monthly that is considered by 2,250,000 buyers to be the ultimate word on the merits and demerits of products.

In accepting the $52,500 job, Mrs. Karpatkin, the mother of three adolescents, will quit her private law practice. She and her husband, who is addition ally an unpaid general counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union, have been partners since several years after her graduation from Yale Law School. Their clients have included school districts, draft-card burners, divorcees, a few small companies and Model Twiggy.

At Consumers Union she will have to calm an internal dispute over whether the organization should concentrate more on product testing or advocacy. Pursuing the latter, it recently has filed lawsuits to compel the Government to improve product safety and reliability standards and to release the justification for price increases filed by major corporations with the Cost of Living Council. Speaking of the testing v. advocacy debate, Mrs. Karpatkin says: "Consumers Union has to do both." The courtroom, in her view, is one more test lab for buyers' rights.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.