301–310 of 336 posts
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I don't think you really understand what "Limited liability" means, nor who these supposed capitalists are. All those public pension plans & unionized retirement funds probably appreciate that they're not on the hook for unlimited liability from J&J.
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"What good will it do society to punish people who do heinous things to others?" It acts as a great deterrent to keep other corporate stooges from entering into high-risk activities. In many cases I advocate for "restorative justice" as opposed to punishment, but in the case of faceless corporations we can crash their value to 0 and call it even. We have a system of private ownership where the owners get to reap the…
Bankrupting J&J would achieve none of the things you say you want. It would just mean the first to sue gets everything and everyone else gets nothing. The assets get stripped and sold off to the next company who can just continue to do the same thing.
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…
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For one thing, this approach allows J&J to determine their maximum liability by only spinning off a certain amount to the subsidiary. It seems more fair to allow any and all claimants to sue J&J, or join together for a class action lawsuit. If the liabilities outstrip the company's total worth they can then go for bankruptcy of the entire J&J business and split assets proportionately across all liabilities.
> For one thing, this approach allows J&J to determine their maximum liability by only spinning off a certain amount to the subsidiary. Except that's not what they did. As the article explains, under the J&J agreement the "maximum liability" of the parent to the subsidiary was defined as the entire cash value of the parent.
For example, by avoiding bankruptcy any existing liabilities aren't pooled and paid out proportionately along with the lawsuit proceedings. There is also nothing stopping the parent company from moving around funds to limit its "entire cash value".
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…
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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.
They're only liable for the full amount because a judge refused to let them go through with the plan. Just because they failed to enact their plan doesn't mean the plan didn't exist. https://www.reuters.com/legal/jjs-ltl-units-bankruptcy-dismi...
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A large portion of the CEO’s wealth is almost certainly tied up in company equity, and this is true for the shareholders by definition. Anyway, it’s not about teaching them anything, it’s about influencing the risk/reward calculus of other companies that are considering skipping steps and releasing unsafe products.
I disagree about influencing the risk reward calculation because the punishment is supposed to be a deterrent. If it's just a fine then the money is like fee to do something and remember that it's not always caught. Imagine if the punishment for murder was $1 million dollars and only if I'm caught.
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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.
They're only liable for the full amount because a judge refused to let them go through with the plan. Just because they failed to enact their plan doesn't mean the plan didn't exist. https://www.reuters.com/legal/jjs-ltl-units-bankruptcy-dismi...
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Isn't the mechanism for the talc -> {ovarian cancer, mesothelioma} connection much clearer and stronger though? That talc co-occurs with asbestos, which is known to be highly carcinogenic and to cause the types of cancers being encountered here. The asbestos fibers were also (allegedly) found in laboratory analysis of samples of the commercial talc powder product.
> Isn't the mechanism for the talc -> {ovarian cancer, mesothelioma} connection much clearer and stronger though? No; not at all. It's extremely dubious indeed, in fact.
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That’s all well and good until you discover that you were affected by something else they did but you can’t sue them any more because they went bust servicing the talc powder claims.
This is the most absurd reasoning I've seen al week "I am sorry, we cant imprison this murderer for life, what if he killed someone else and they need to sue him too, we can't i prison him for life twice!"