Law360, New York ( March 16, 2015, 10:01 AM EDT) -- $300 million. That figure recently sent shockwaves through the American automobile industry when Mark Rosekind, chief of the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration, proposed that the maximum potential fine by his agency be increased from $35 million to $300 million. Of course, $35 million itself is no small potential fine, and in imposing $126 million in fines in 2014, NHTSA exceeded in a single year the total of all previous fines in the agency's decades-long history. While the automotive industry has been the focus of regulatory attention recently, manufacturers of consumer goods also faced record-high fines in 2014. The Consumer Product Safety Commission imposed a total of $12.2 million in fines last year, including a record-setting penalty of $4.3 million against Baja Inc., maker of go-carts and minibikes....