More hard hitting justice for corporate malfeasance.
In their case, $9 billion wipes out about three years of profit.
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...
If you only consider the profit from the talc business, how much is the fine compared to profit?
Imagine if Google was fined 50% of a year’s revenue because of Google Voice.
That’s a massive penalty by any measure.
This is the sort of punishment we need for corporations.
Maybe make a new law
Some new law would likely be needed. How could such a law be written in a manner that satisfies the vagueness doctrine?
This is a serious problem if you want to wait until a perfect law is written it won't be solved.
Also, can you provide a some other solution?
Considering laws exist for many types of actions it should be possible to make one in which knowingly producing and distributing any product for any price that you know to cause harm, and that harm is not made of aware of to the public in an obvious way, should be held liable for any damages that occur from the use of that product as indicated by the instructions
This includes people that approve of the actions and/or responsible for the subordinates involved in the production/approval of said products, in the company/subsidiary/any related entity, as long as that person was provided with the information or access to information that would allow them to ascertain the risk with a reasonable amount of accuracy. However, it shan't be required to show that person actually consumed or understood that information if it was expected that they do so.
The punishment must be but can not be limited to monetary fines which can not be purged through bankruptcy. <something about jail here>
etc etc.
Everybody thinks personal injury lawyers are slimy but then quotes their “data” like it was proven fact.
Regardless of the numbers, for that to be true, you've got to be pretty convinced you've fucked up really hard.
People get cancer all the time. It’s very, very hard to prove a causal relationship.
And they make a ton of money doing it.
Even if you were found liable in civil court you wouldn't lose all of your income forever. You would be able to declare personal bankruptcy and clear the debt.
I guess it depends.
From the net:
"Instances in which a court ordered judgment won’t be overridden by bankruptcy include debts related to:
Student loans
Any debt owed to the government, including taxes and fines
Court ordered awards related to criminal proceedings"
Kill a giant after it steps on people and other giants will learn to tiptoe.
It's an analogy, trying to take it too far will get silly.
Perhaps the first comment was too harsh but let’s not be overly generous.
It looks like an $8.9bn settlement after $7.4bn in litigation expenses [1]. I would guess that is a substantial portion of J&J's total profits from talc-based products, inflation adjusted. Were that product an independent company, this would have bankrupted it. That's decent deterrence.
[1] https://njbiz.com/jj-offers-8-9b-to-settle-claims-talc-produ...
You’re claiming a tougher penalty would be fought less vigorously?
If you know you screwed up and instead of taking ownership you play the blame game, if you lose the lawsuit, you should be responsible not just for the actual damages but also you should be required to payout 100% of your own lawyer fees to the defendant as well.
I’m not even convinced this is actually a good deterrence. Companies have been criminally negligent since the birth of capitalism. They have caused immeasurable harm in multiple schemes in many ill guided attempts of making more and more money. These companies have gotten several fines, some CEOs have even been imprisoned, others have been forced into bankruptcy, and yet we see companies being criminally negligent, causing more harm, starting new malicious schemes, again and again. If these fines are supposed to be a deterrence, they are obviously not working.
There is no amount of “process improvement” that is gonna change basic human nature.
Now I do believe that capitalism is a bad system that should be abolished. However I am aware that that isn’t going to happen any time soon. In the meantime I’ll settle for companies and CEOs being held responsible for the crimes they commit under the influence of the profit motive. I’d also be happy if we would do something to abolish the class of ultra-wealthy, or at the very least strip them off their influence over our democracy.
If you wanna abolish capitalism, what system do you think should take it's place that wouldn't have human selfishness?
Just to be clear:
> I merely stated that this happens under capitalism, and it keeps happening, even when the justice system is applied in an effort of deterrence.
is an explicit accusation against capitalism in exclusion of some other system.
As I said, above, humans have been negligent since time immemorial. People put in charge of companies in socialist systems are also criminally negligent, usually though there are even fewer consequences for them.
https://njbiz.com/jj-offers-8-9b-to-settle-claims-talc-produ...
This is in addition to the settlement deal discussed here.
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.
We have organizations like the FDA, etc., to ensure that the food and drugs we put in our bodies are safe. The reality is the gamut of technologies, products, and environments that impact our health are far more broad than “food and drug”; why not regulate them the same way?
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
Mind you I've been hearing about this mythical "little guy" that massive multinational corporations love to trot out when it comes to increasing regulations or taxes against them but over the course of my lifetime all I've seen is a massive increase in power and consolidation from these companies.
It's so odd realizing you live in a dystopian cyberpunk future without the pretty trinkets to go along with it.
This is the future all of us kids from the 1970s and 1980s BUILT on the premise of "wouldnt it be cool if...." -- We (and I am personally guilty, as are many HNers, of facilitating the "wouldnt it be cool if Cyberpunk tropes were reality?"
I helped build spying (marketing) infra, sentiment measures etc...
But the "little guy" that bigPharma preys upon is the 'patient' J&J needs corporate capital punishment, because this isnt the first time or only incident of them causing negative outcomes for profit (recall their tainted vaccines?)
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.
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.
The thing is asbestos can occur naturally in and dirt all around the world. There are some places even in the US where dust storms are more dangerous just because this fact. Here's just a short memo about naturally occurring asbestos. https://ncceh.ca/sites/default/files/Naturally_occurring_asb...
I am not saying J&J should get off scotch free if they knew some sources of talc they were using had high levels of asbestos. However, I am gonna say it's not surprising that there may be some contamination. Moreover that's just one form of natural occurring contamination. There other minerals that naturally occur that also are unwanted contaminates such as heavy metals and so forth. What matters is are the contaminants reasonable low for a naturally sourced product since it's not possible to have zero contamination.
If you're talking about punitive damages, the size matters. Making sure that the action is non-profitable is important. But at the same time, you can only expect so much oversight of small parts of a company.
2% of the net worth of a Fortune 50 company is not a small fine.
> Why should not a company be brought to its knees? You know, the same as citizens are?
I'd flip this question around. Why should citizens be brought to their knees? But often, they are not. Certainly not with civil actions.
That's your opinion and worth as much as any other. Second, it isn't even 2% amortized, which compounds the lack of impact.
The people who died over this are dead and aren't getting paid, so these kind of small payouts are minimal incidental damage.
Put one or two executives in jail and things will look different. Rob a bank, you go to jail. Rob people of their lives and you keep your well paid job and your company get slapped on the wrist.
Ultimately, the fines are paid by consumers. But jail time? That's a payment made by the guilty.