Johnson and Johnson reaches deal for $8.9B talc settlement

The public benefit from presenting a vigorous defense in all cases (not just ones with sympathetic defendants) is to require the prosecution, as a matter of course, to actually prove their case in accordance with the law, something which should be required in a fair court system.

That they didn't need the tactic in the end doesn't make it any less sleazy to have attempted it.

"The Texas two-step allows solvent companies to shield their assets from litigants using protections that are normally reserved for bankrupt companies"

So I find your claims highly dubious that "wasn't as bad"

How can we make a campaign slogan specific to shit like this? Should we call it 'tough on some crime'? 'Tough on big crime?'

I simply do not believe that. If the rules are set correctly and everyone understands them then it's easy to work within those rules. For example, everyone knows not to fiddle the company's books—if one does and is caught then tough, one suffers the consequences.

Let's be clear about this, we're not talking about genuine mistakes or unforseen consequences, force majeure/Act of God or such but deliberate coverups when evidence of problems presents itself.

The rules would be simple, anyone who became aware of a dangerous issue would be liable to report it and be strongly protected at law from retribution by vindictive management. I would add this would be no different to Occupational Health and Safety law that already exists in many jurisdictions.

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Edit: such laws would also be framed to avoid unnecessary damage to a company's reputation from trivial or even vindictive actions by wayward employees. Ways of reporting—both within a company and to government agencies—to ensure companies don't suffer undue harm already exist in some existing and proposed whistleblower legislation. They could easily be adopted.

I don't know if this policy would make the world a better place. There are so many life saving or life improving technologies that would be delayed because of the burden of proving them to be "safe"

I suspect big companies would love to stifle the competition from small competitors who can’t afford to sink money into this type of analysis

It won't work for something like cigarettes where the risk is external but if the risk is to you, then you can manage it this way.

Johnson and Johnson knew their product had asbestos in it. It seems absurd they're not facing criminal charges. If I, as an individual, sold an asbestos tainted powder to people that resulted in deaths and cancer then there's a very good chance that I'd be spending the rest of my life in prison, even if I didn't knowingly do so. But if I do it as a massive global corporation, on a far wider scale, and with full knowledge of what I'm doing, my penalty is... nothing? I mean literally they're not even facing criminal charges, this was a civil suit. It just makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and the stupidity of it all is enough to make one angry.

I personally agree with the precautionary principle and think there should be stricter requirements for certain classes of new products, but the best solution is probably some type of compromise based on level of newness and possible danger.

The core problem is the "unknown unknown". There's no upper limit to how much testing you should do to ensure a product is safe because the space of possible dangers is nearly infinite. So any policy will be a balancing act of false positives and false negatives and what levels of each are tolerable. I think this is the proper question and it is not an easy one to answer.

Perhaps the first comment was too harsh but let’s not be overly generous.

But really the whole point here is that without painful penalties, there is no deterrence whatsoever. Seeing 'megacorp knowingly sold asbestos tainted product for decades' is not even going to elicit a 'omg I can't believe it' from anybody not born yesterday. Nor will the fact that they faced a civil penalty that was but the mildest of prods on the wrist, and 0 criminal penalties. We seemingly have a government completely incapable of holding large corporations accountable for their actions. And that is seriously not normal, nor acceptable.

[1] - https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/JNJ/johnson-johnso...

More info about Saran wrap[2]. It's effectively 3000x more permeable to Oxygen that the old version.

[1] https://uspackagingandwrapping.com/plastic-wrap-101.html#:~:....

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saran_(plastic)

Edit: I now see that'll be phased out, later this year https://www.jnj.com/johnson-johnson-consumer-health-to-trans...

Allegedly. There's really good evidence that asbestos was making its way into he product in the 1970s, but evidence starts to get really thin starting in the 1990s. This is a settlement after all, so I wouldn't call it the final word on the subject.

I think " b) whether talc itself is carcinogenic." is a much more interesting question, but probably hard to answer at this point.

They have changed the process to remove the asbestos contamination, but have gone a step further in the US, out of risk-aversion, to replace the Talc with cornstarch entirely.

So if your yearly income is 200k, and I fine you 100k, that's no big deal?

This would like if you earn 100k per year and after all of your rent/food/gas and other expenses were paid for, you had $10k left. And you were fined $5k, which you were able to payout at a rate of $200 per year for the next 25 years. For causing cancer and other diseases to tens of thousands of people.

The bit where they decided a know carcinogen wasn’t going to cause cancer. That’s the shit they pulled.

That's part of the point actually, some of the people in charge at the time are probably still alive and would deserve to be brought to a court…