Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 336 posts

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#211

Post by selectodude »

themitigating wrote: post #116
throwawaymaths wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a classic "what could possibly go wrong" move, long ago the federal government decided that you can't discharge student debt in bankruptcy, because if you could, then no one would lend education money (which is not collateralizable) and fewer people would go to college.

Why wouldn't that apply to any credit that can be dismissed through bankruptcy?

It does. Credit cards are fully dischargeable. They also charge interest rates over 30 percent and won’t lend you $100,000 as an 18 year old with no income.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#212

Post by pessimizer »

codelord wrote: post #103

As someone who did a PhD and published and read many papers (in ML) I believe vast majority of papers in ML are misleading. If in fact every paper that claims a better performance over state of the art was true we would have solved AI by now. You see all sorts of problems when you dig deeper into the technical details of peer reviewed publications (even in top tier conferences) including misleading baselines, statist…

> It's easy to dismiss this because screw J&J. But I think we are all paying for these lawsuits through our insurances and taxes and higher drug prices.

1) You think these lawsuits have a bigger effect on insurance premiums than an increase in the incidence of ovarian cancer?

2) This is a choice we make as a society, and has little to do with lawsuits. J&J is not the victim of how we finance health care, it is the beneficiary.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#213

Post by sonicshadow »

youngtaff wrote: post #47
ma2t wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The complaints outline substantial profits that the scientists are alleged to have made as expert witnesses. All four are alleged to have made hundreds of dollars and hour, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, or more than $3 million over multi-decade careers. According to the linked complaint, at least two have profit sharing in Peninsula Pathology Associates through which some of this litigation work flows. On…

$3 mn in a decade is only 300,000 / year Plus they’ll be costs involved that will come from that 300,000 too

Wow! Do people outside of tech not make that much money??

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#214

Post by andsoitis »

fennecfoxy wrote: post #175
FireBeyond wrote: post #5

Apropos of anything else, J&J's handling of this has been despicable. Creating an entity specifically to pick up all of the related liabilities, picking up those liabilities and then (exact count may be wrong, but it's very close) literally filing for bankruptcy within the space of three days. The Texas two-step, as it's called. > In 2021, the company spun off its liabilities into a new entity called LTL Management u…

Well the fact that that is possible is just a reflection of most of the things wrong with the world. The rich get richer.

> The rich get richer.

Reasons include, but are not limited to:

a) compounding

b) the right to bequeath your assets to your children

c) if you're financially savvy you're more likely to educate your children about long-term wealth

d) uneven effects of monetary policy (e.g. interest rates)

etc.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#215

Post by haswell »

tempest_ wrote: post #173
dev_tty01 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the sentiment, but if I stop and think about it, I don't understand the math. I'm not intending to criticize since I struggle with this myself. Try on this hypothetical. Imagine that ten people in a giant company called ACME made some decisions that led to 50,000 people getting hurt. ACME also employs 100,000 hard working people, representing perhaps 0.3-0.4 million family members dependent upon that income. Im…

Reads like a "too big to fail" argument. It works for the banking industry I guess so why not here too.

It’s unrelated in structured and substance to “too big to fail”.

Too big to fail implies catastrophic harm worse than the (unpalatable) steps necessary to prop something up.

This argument is really exploring the line between “company did something harmful” and “company did something so harmful they should no longer exist”.

I’m not arguing for either, but TBTF is unrelated.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#216

Post by shkkmo »

somenits wrote: post #158
FireBeyond wrote: post #5

Apropos of anything else, J&J's handling of this has been despicable. Creating an entity specifically to pick up all of the related liabilities, picking up those liabilities and then (exact count may be wrong, but it's very close) literally filing for bankruptcy within the space of three days. The Texas two-step, as it's called. > In 2021, the company spun off its liabilities into a new entity called LTL Management u…

This is the top-voted comment but as many of the other replies have pointed out, it's totally wrong outrage-bait. J&J, the parent company, is still ultimately liable for the full amount. The bankruptcy process just allows the courts to manage all of the claims together under the authority of one judge, instead of having different courts in every state issue incompatible damages awards in a race to judgment.

> The bankruptcy process just allows the courts to manage all of the claims together under the authority of one judge, instead of having different courts in every state issue incompatible damages awards in a race to judgment

This "just" is sure doing a lot of work.

First off, if J&J is really on the hook for all the liabilities of the child company, then the child company is not bankrupt since it has plenty of money to pay unless J&J is also bankrupt. This makes it pretty clear that the bankruptcy is a sham legal maneuver.

Second, it is a bit rich that this legal maneuver is framed at "protecting claimants" when it blocks those claimants from pursuing cases that maximizes their damages. It seems pretty clear that J&J are not following this strategy to protect the victims an ensure fairness but to minimize their own costs and damages.

What this basically amounts to is subverting bankruptcy law to force claimants into something more akin to a class action without the consent of the claimants.

If it really is the case that total awarded damages exceed what J&J can pay, then J&J should itself file for bankruptcy.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#217

Post by zenapollo »

wiz21c wrote: post #198
edgyquant wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans optimize for their own self interest, this is basic economic theory. It’s not despicable it’s human nature.

please don't mix up human nature and economic theory. That's not the same.

It’s not as different as you might think. There has been a movement of anthropologists to call homo sapien alternatively homo economicus. Our ability to accumulate and share resources, which allowed us to build and trade, has deep roots in evolutionary psychology and sociology, and as these anthropologists argue, is perhaps the thing that most poignantly makes us uniquely human.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#218

Post by scarface_74 »

pessimizer wrote: post #203
scarface_74 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The wealthiest 10% own 89% of stocks.

And according to a sibling link, 59% have some money in stocks. How many public sector workers for instance who have pensions or retirees who have dividend paying stocks like J and J do you think are cheering for those “evil capitalists pigs” to go bankrupt?

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#219

Post by shkkmo »

nl wrote: post #20
FireBeyond wrote: post #5

Apropos of anything else, J&J's handling of this has been despicable. Creating an entity specifically to pick up all of the related liabilities, picking up those liabilities and then (exact count may be wrong, but it's very close) literally filing for bankruptcy within the space of three days. The Texas two-step, as it's called. > In 2021, the company spun off its liabilities into a new entity called LTL Management u…

Having read the Matt Levine piece linked below ( https://archive.is/KcL2P ) I think that J&J did the right thing by attempting to use bankruptcy to organize payments. It was not avoiding liability at all. The court that dismissed the claim in general agreed with J&J's process, but said it was too early. Some key quote from Levine: > Juries in the US don’t like it when companies make products that kill people, and the…

> It was not avoiding liability at all.

BS. So much stinking BS. This is even contradicted by your own quotes.

>> they are not temperamentally lavish with claims.

Which is just admitting that bankrupty courts are likely to awards lower judgements than the juries and judges who would otherwise be awarding damages. That is pretty clearly reducing liability.

If J&J eas really about to run out of money to pay out liabilities due lawsuits and we need to split what money they do have fairly, then J&J itself should declare bankruptcy. What they are doing instead is a sham legal maneuver designed to reduce judgements sizes and remove the legal rights of their victims.

Trying to couch that as "protecting the victims" is a farce. I wonder how much Matt got paid...

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#220

Post by kevinventullo »

dev_tty01 wrote: post #161
onlypositive wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather see J&J go out of business entirely.

I get the sentiment, but if I stop and think about it, I don't understand the math. I'm not intending to criticize since I struggle with this myself. Try on this hypothetical. Imagine that ten people in a giant company called ACME made some decisions that led to 50,000 people getting hurt. ACME also employs 100,000 hard working people, representing perhaps 0.3-0.4 million family members dependent upon that income. Im…

The market will recreate those jobs as competitors rush in to fill the gaps left by J&J, including both employment and the value of their products.

By not destroying the company, you are giving all sufficiently large future companies carte blanche to break all the consumer protection laws they want, and you are rewarding investors for those companies. The long term moral hazard isn’t worth it; the investors and decision makers absolutely need to be wiped out.

Post reply on HN