Judge rules Charter must pay $1.1B after murder of cable customer
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
>Charter was accused of hiring Holden without verifying his employment history and ignoring a series of red flags about his behavior, which included stealing credit cards and checks from elderly female customers.
and
>"Charter knowingly or intentionally committed forgery with the intent to defraud or harm Plaintiffs," Renteria wrote. The family's attorney previously said that "Charter Spectrum attorneys used a forged document to try to force the lawsuit into a closed-door arbitration where the results would have been secret and damages for the murder would have been limited to the amount of Ms. Thomas's final bill."
Malfeasance by anyone in the justice system is never criminal. They would never do that to themselves. If the legislature fails to carve out protections, they'll simply make them up out of whole cloth, such as judicial immunity.
You would agree this is not the norm for wrongful death lawsuits, yes? I mean, at the rate they occur, businesses would all be out of business if it cost $1B every time.
Casually referring to someone being "entitled" to a billion dollars therefore raises the question of why most people aren't; have you any opinion on that?
From what I've heard if you talk to a lawyer about suing they are going to say that potential damages are largely dependent on lost years of life and earnings, and so, say, a retired homemaker isn't worth it.
Yes. That’s _the point_ of punitive damages.
And most people aren’t entitled to these damages because most people haven’t suffered this tort, have they?
But there is research that indicate wrongful or negligent death is one of the leading causes of death in the US, up there with heart disease or cancer (now covid probably). And that's just related to medical treatment, not the auto companies, drug companies, and every other business or corporation.
Is this case worse than average? Sure, that seems very plausible. Should the damages be higher than average, sure, why not.
But large businesses face hundreds of lawsuits at any given moment. People die every day because of negligence and don't get a dime, and it seems extreme and unjustifiable that the difference between them and this case is literally infinity to one.
The edge, if you perceive one, in my words (and I think there is) is coming from the sense that propaganda about plaintiff's lawyers has convinced the public most lawsuits are frivolous, versus my knowledge of the "part of the iceberg below the waterline", the sheer volume of serious (but insignificant to large companies in terms of financial liability) lawsuits that you don't know about unless you have some experience (not necessarily as a lawyer) in corporate litigation support.
Also this is reinforced by my life outside of work, where family members and acquaintances have had serious harm done to them via prescribed drugs and medical care, and you know, they didn't get a billion dollars. Did any of them or their families deserve a cool billion? Eh...maybe not, but one should have the grace to justify why their lives weren't worth even a dollar.
>That’s _the point_ of punitive damages.
The point of punitive damages is that they put people out of business? How much do you think it happens? I predict that Charter will not be destroyed by this (assuming it's upheld) and that other companies that might be deterred or destroyed by such an award will continue to (usually) not get anything similar.
It's possible there should be a criminal case - I am vaguely wondering, not being a lawyer, if you could make a case for felony murder.
So I'm not of the view that a billion dollars is too harsh.
The part of this case that raises an interesting question for me is whether Charter's employment of this individual was reasonable. If Charter conducted a background check and saw that the prospective employee had stolen credit cards and checks before, should that have been sufficient reason to not hire him? It's not as if the prospective employee had a prior murder conviction. Even if the prospective employee did have a prior murder conviction: if people feel that the company should not hired the employee, then that seems like it would have a chilling effect on the hiring of felons. From that perspective, it seems excessive to hold the company accountable for this particular action (assuming that this has not been an issue with other employees).
They didn't run a background check. He'd been robbing other charter customers. from the linked article:
> In the days before Thomas' murder, Holden made 'outcries' to supervisors about personal and financial issues related to a divorce that left him without money or a place to stay, and he cried in a meeting with his supervisor during which he said he was 'not OK,' according to attorneys for Thomas' family. They said that immediately after being denied money, he began scamming elderly female Spectrum cable customers by stealing their credit cards and checks."
He then "went on a spending spree with her credit cards" after murdering the woman. I'm a fan of hiring ex-felons and giving people second chances, but it seems they had reason enough to be concerned about this guy.
I also had read they didn't run a background check beforehand. Upon a closer read, however, it turns out that Charter did conduct actually run the background check (from the article):
>> Holden's pre-employment criminal background check "showed no arrests, convictions, or other criminal behavior."
> I'm a fan of hiring ex-felons and giving people second chances, but it seems they had reason enough to be concerned about this guy.
To be clear, Holden was not an ex-felon when Charter hired him. From that perspective, this might have been Holden's first or second chance. What the plaintiffs argue is that Charter did not verify employment history and if they had done so, they should have known not to hire Holden. In this article (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/06/jury-holds-chart...), it appears that Holden had previously been fired for "forgery, falsifying documents and harassment of fellow employees."
So, my counter-factual question: suppose they had verified his employment history and knew this -- should Charter have not hired Holden? Would it be reasonable for any company to hire Holden? If not, is there any chance for Holden to productively rejoin society?
If Charter had verified Holden's employment history, it would have been entirely reasonable for them to have not hired Holden. However, I think it would be reasonable for a company to decide to take a chance on hiring such a person. Keep in mind that the criminal background check did not turn anything up, so Holden was not convicted in a court of law.
However, this judgment against Charter (putting aside Charter's forging of a legal document) makes the risk of hiring an employee very, very high: if an employee goes berserk on company time, then the company can be liable for over a billion dollars? This seems like it would have a chilling effect on the hiring of ex-felons and those with mental health issues.
> In the days before Thomas' murder, Holden made 'outcries' to supervisors about personal and financial issues related to a divorce that left him without money or a place to stay, and he cried in a meeting with his supervisor during which he said he was 'not OK,' according to attorneys for Thomas' family. They said that immediately after being denied money, he began scamming elderly female Spectrum cable customers by stealing their credit cards and checks."
This does complicate the case, but would Charter have had a reasonable opportunity to have prevented this? Essentially, Holden appears to have had a clean background check, and he asked for money from his supervisors. Seems reasonable for his supervisors to have declined giving him money. Then what? Was Charter supposed to fire Holden for asking for money and being emotionally distraught? That does not seem reasonable. The plaintiffs might argue that Charter should have placed Holden on some sort of leave, but having a policy for paid leave seems to leave companies vulnerable to abuse while having a policy for unpaid leave seems cruel. Once Charter found out about these behaviors, it makes sense for Charter to have denied him additional opportunities, but it sounds like the murder happened early on.
In summary, we tend to dislike ISPs for various reasons, and perhaps some of us are not troubled by a company like Charter being liable for such a large amount. I am concerned, however, that a judgment like this will have a chilling effect on the hiring of certain groups of people.
> I am concerned, however, that a judgment like this will have a chilling effect on the hiring of certain groups of people.
My personal viewpoint on this is that - depending on the range of offences committed - there's some professions / occupations that should get closed off for a good while. You don't want your fraud-convicted individual working in finance or accounts, nor someone convicted of theft, assault, etc. working in people's homes, particularly potentially vulnerable individuals.
The latter case seems to be what Charter is accused of here. It's commendable to hire those that have served their time - to help them rehabilitate and repay any debts to society - but you need to ensure they're not put in a position where they might be tempted to offend again.
Jumping from forgery to murder seems like a big jump to me.
Additionally, going back to an earlier counter-factual, suppose that Holden actually did murder someone before and finished his sentence and now further suppose that Charter agrees with you that it would only be ok to hire Holden for a call center job. Suppose that Holden then murdered a supervisor that he was angry with... don't you think that people would have expected Charter to have been held liable for the second murder?
You could imagine imposing additional restrictions (e.g. "only virtual call center jobs where he would work remotely"), but at some point, the restrictions would be sufficiently outside of Charter's normal workflow that it wouldn't be worth hiring Holden... leading to a chilling effect of hiring former felons.
I agree, but I also think this is also a judgment call (e.g. how long is a "good while?"). Should a company be vulnerable to a billion dollar liability because of a judgment call that didn't work out? Hiring anyone is a judgment call. Going down this path, for example, one could imagine a world in which society pressures companies to screen for mental health, and to not hire people who have such issues (e.g. "Who knows? they might go and kill someone!").
> You don't want your fraud-convicted individual working in finance or accounts, nor someone convicted of theft, assault, etc. working in people's homes, particularly potentially vulnerable individuals.
Keep in mind that Holden's criminal background check came back clean (in particular, no legal record of assault), and verifying employment might have turned up "forgery, falsifying documents and harassment of fellow employees." Even believing the former employers (since these charges were not proven in court), I personally would not have expected someone like that to have murdered someone else. Hence, from the limited information that I know of the case right now, Charter seems to me to have made a reasonable decision to hire Holden (not one that I would have made myself, but within some realm of reasonableness).
"The jury also found that "Charter knowingly or intentionally committed forgery with the intent to defraud or harm Plaintiffs," Renteria wrote. The family's attorney previously said that "Charter Spectrum attorneys used a forged document to try to force the lawsuit into a closed-door arbitration where the results would have been secret and damages for the murder would have been limited to the amount of Ms. Thomas's final bill."
I'm as mercenary and capitalist as one can be, but I still have personal ethics. There is NO EXCUSE for that sort of intentional maliciousness from a company. Corporations are an entity of the state with an intention to serve the public, this should result in the FTC getting involved and stripping their corporate charter and forcing a sale of their assets to their competitors, and the jailing of the executives involved in the process of that forgery.
$7B is a pittance compared to that, the fact it was lowered to less than 2% of their revenue in 2019 (the year the murder happened), is fucking despicable.