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J&J tried to get federal judge to block publication of Reuters story

reuters.com

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Re: J&J tried to get federal judge to block publication of Reuters story

#161

Post by wizzwizz4 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #123
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't think it was ever illegal to say things that were true, justified, and in the public interest to have spoken. Could you give some examples (or point me at the relevant laws) please?

Even if we assume those are the best metrics, if something has to be shown to be in the public interest, rather than just not against the public interest, that's quite a high bar.

Publishing the contents of my diary is not against the public interest. I'd still be quite upset if you did that, especially if picked events to make me look bad. (Yet, you wouldn't need to be lying. I've done things I'm not proud of, that I try to hide.) If ever it becomes in the public interest to publish my secrets (e.g. if I'm claiming no affiliation with an organisation I used to work with, while awarding them grants) then go ahead. But until then, my private life is my private life.

Re: J&J tried to get federal judge to block publication of Reuters story

#162

Post by Spooky23 »

fires10 wrote: post #134
dv_dt wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an area where I can vote for judges, I do google searches on all the candidates and rarely get good information. If you’re lucky you can get some very rudimentary assessment of if they have any legal background at all. But to really research a judge candidate I think would take access to a legal case database and a fairly sophisticated understanding of law, and far too much time.

I am not a fan of voting for judges. Judges should be determined by technical merits and skills more like hiring a developer. This I think would be better handled by having a diverse group of judges routinely review all decisions by a judge and issuing corrective actions against the judge. This review should be done periodically and not require an appeal.

I disagree. Attorneys are a fairly tight group in general that rely on peer opinion to get jobs.

Nobody is going speak about about Judge A because the political machinery and peer pressure are very powerful. When Judge B rats out Judge A, all of the sudden those appellate court opportunities or various other lucrative appointments suddenly are out of reach.

Judicial elections are a good way to get bad judges out and mediocre or better judges get to mostly do their thing. The places where the broader political environment is corrupt are no more corrupt than if judges were appointed. There’s the benefit with an election that the local party leaders can just opt to not support a bad judge versus making a decision to oppose him.

If any change were to be made, I think making the clerks protected civil service employees would probably blunt the judges power, particularly if cousin Rufus get appointed to be county judge because he’s drinking too much at the law firm.

Re: J&J tried to get federal judge to block publication of Reuters story

#163

Post by throwaway09223 »

xeromal wrote: post #81
borski wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure they can, if: a) it might get them in legal hot water, or b) it is personal and they don’t want to get into it. You’re not owed anything by anyone here, and they did bring up an example about family court and link to an article about it. :)

Seems like a lame way to bring up an example to me.

Imagine how it feels from the perspective of the person constrained by an illegal court order.

Re: J&J tried to get federal judge to block publication of Reuters story

#164

Post by xdennis »

tyrfing wrote: post #62
dukeofdoom wrote: post #33

Pharma companies get away with way too much. No other industry could you sell products that only slightly work as advertised for some people, some of the time. But charge everyone same, with no refunds when the product doesn't work. And you can't even sue if it causes you harm. The new development to use the power of the courts and government to mandate their use should give you pause. The absolute risk reduction (AR…

Only a certain percent of people enjoy themselves on rollercoasters. Therefore, charging everyone for entry is a scam. > And you can't even sue if it causes you harm. There are 38,200 pending lawsuits against J&J solely for talc powder claims. A single one of them was $2.5 billion.

You can't compare roller coasters to pharmaceuticals because enjoyment is subjective, but medicine isn't.

Re: J&J tried to get federal judge to block publication of Reuters story

#165

Post by throwaway09223 »

xeromal wrote: post #80
chris_wot wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They absolutely do not have to explain themselves further. They owe you (and us) nothing.

I just mean from a debat/argument standpoint. How can someone say "No, that's incorrect, but I refuse to elaborate". Why even talk? lol

I'm not debating with anyone. I'm just sharing a personal experience.

Re: J&J tried to get federal judge to block publication of Reuters story

#166

Post by xdennis »

pessimizer wrote: post #139
xdennis wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that having some proof is too much to ask. Press freedom is important because it can keep in check the other branches of power. But it shouldn't be so free as to be able to publish known lies.

Depends on if you think that freedom of speech should only be for multi-millionaires.

I'm not sure what you mean. Personally I believe that individuals should have more freedom of speech protections than corporations or media companies because of the power imbalance.

Re: J&J tried to get federal judge to block publication of Reuters story

#167

Post by quesera »

Supermancho wrote: post #160
dekhn wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because civil suits that find them guilty could make them go out of business even if they did nothing wrong.

> because civil suits that find them guilty could make them go out of business That's hyperbole. Even if they were fined their market cap, the company would survive.

> That's hyperbole. Even if they were fined their market cap, the company would survive.

Really?

Market capitalization is, loosely, asset valuation plus X years of projected future earnings.

If JNJ was fined their market cap of $451B, it would take about 19.6 years of earnings to pay, assuming no declines due to reputational damage from the judgement. (2021 earnings $23B, BTW up almost 40% from 2020!).

So call it 20 years, with 100% of earnings dedicated to payment of the fine.

They could sell off assets (recent valuation $179B), but a) that would diminish their earning potential over the period, and b) even if they sold literally every owned asset (reducing the company to nothing), it would only reduce the fine restitution period from 20 years to 12 years. And since they'd be reduced to zero revenue and earnings, it would take infinitely many years to pay off the remainder. Of course the company will have ceased to exist at that point, satisfying GP's prediction of non-survival.

Or were you being hyperbolic?

Re: J&J tried to get federal judge to block publication of Reuters story

#168

Post by throwaway09223 »

bladegash wrote: post #83
throwaway09223 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to elaborate other than to say my speech was restrained due to someone else's actions, but family court is definitely an area where common practice has strayed very, very far from anything resembling constitutionality. One such example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

Yep, ex parte family law orders should be available for extreme situations, but they are widely abused, only need to meet a legal standard of preponderance of evidence, do not require underlying criminal conduct, and can deprive a person of constitutional rights for months or more. They were technically temporary orders pending a full hearing, but those hearings can be delayed for a variety of reasons. In one order b…

In my case, it was not issued ex-parte. In fact, it was not even requested relief. My impression is that these sorts of prior restraints are so normalized that they're applied as a matter of course.

Re: J&J tried to get federal judge to block publication of Reuters story

#169

Post by resoluteteeth »

briandear wrote: post #114

Former Reuters COO is on the board of Pfizer. J&J is a vaccine competitor of Pfizer. To a reasonable person, this might be something of interest.

That seems like an extreme stretch unless you have have some reason to think that Reuters wouldn't have normally reported something like this and the COO intervened or something like that.

Re: J&J tried to get federal judge to block publication of Reuters story

#170

Post by KennyBlanken »

borski wrote: post #92
xeromal wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just mean from a debat/argument standpoint. How can someone say "No, that's incorrect, but I refuse to elaborate". Why even talk? lol

Because this isn’t a formal debate, and generally we trust in others’ firsthand experiences, especially when they link to a related article, even if it isn’t precisely the story that happened to them. The GP is, in this case, an original source and as per the HN guidelines [1] we assume good faith. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The sentence you conveniently left out leaves out the context of "assume good faith":

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

That does not, in any way, say "assume anecdotes are trustworthy." Nowhere in the rules does it say or even imply this.

It is also laughable to suggest the HN community assumes good faith; the comments section has a substantial amount of comments from software engineers thinking they're qualified to rip apart the work of people who are professionals in their fields, usually with high levels of derision.

Regardless of what HN rules say, anecdotes are literally the worst way of supporting an argument, subject to no end of observer biases.

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