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Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

reuters.com

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

#321

Post by somenits »

FireBeyond wrote: post #319
akgoel wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matt Levine had a more charitable reading of the Texas Two-Step for J&J: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-01-31/matt-l... The idea here was that a bankruptcy judge could more fairly distribute $61.5 billion dollars among claimants than having them sue J&J one at a time and getting uneven awards and costing everyone more lawyer hours.

Matt Levine's spin on this is horribly pro-corporate. The Texas Two-Step isn't a concept borne from bankruptcy courts. Would that it were so. You talk about charitability, but here's a question for Matt, you and others: "Is this strategy called the Texas Two-Step because: 1) it assists claimants and plaintiffs (your adversaries) to bond together and present one solid unified case against you, or... 2) because it assi…

You know you've lost the argument when your only response to actual facts and analysis is "yeah but what does this name sound like".

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

#322

Post by somenits »

FireBeyond wrote: post #320
HDThoreaun wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The texas two step is not used to skirt liabilities. Its point is to consolidate all the cases in one court to reduce lawyer headaches and ensure each claimant is paid fairly.

No, it's absolutely and really not. Here... Is this strategy called the Texas Two-Step because: 1) it assists claimants and plaintiffs (your adversaries) to bond together and present one solid unified case against you, or... 2) because it assists you to elegantly dance around your liabilities?

You know you've lost the argument when your only response to actual facts and analysis is "yeah but what does this name sound like".

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

#323

Post by skeaker »

somenits wrote: post #322
FireBeyond wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's absolutely and really not. Here... Is this strategy called the Texas Two-Step because: 1) it assists claimants and plaintiffs (your adversaries) to bond together and present one solid unified case against you, or... 2) because it assists you to elegantly dance around your liabilities?

You know you've lost the argument when your only response to actual facts and analysis is "yeah but what does this name sound like".

No, GP makes a fair point. If it were true that all this does is benefit claimants and plaintiffs, the adversaries of the one taking the action, why would they do it?

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

#324

Post by somenits »

skeaker wrote: post #323
somenits wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know you've lost the argument when your only response to actual facts and analysis is "yeah but what does this name sound like".

No, GP makes a fair point. If it were true that all this does is benefit claimants and plaintiffs, the adversaries of the one taking the action, why would they do it?

Of course it would benefit J&J too. You get to consolidate your cases in one court. You get to be in federal court, which is by conventional wisdom believed to be more defendant-friendly. You get to achieve legal certainty in a shorter period of time. It also benefits all the plaintiffs who weren't early to the party, since they are guaranteed a slice of the pie (if they win), instead of the first few successful plaintiffs eating the whole thing.

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

#325

Post by FireBeyond »

somenits wrote: post #321
FireBeyond wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matt Levine's spin on this is horribly pro-corporate. The Texas Two-Step isn't a concept borne from bankruptcy courts. Would that it were so. You talk about charitability, but here's a question for Matt, you and others: "Is this strategy called the Texas Two-Step because: 1) it assists claimants and plaintiffs (your adversaries) to bond together and present one solid unified case against you, or... 2) because it assi…

You know you've lost the argument when your only response to actual facts and analysis is "yeah but what does this name sound like".

Alright then, here:

The Texas two-step allows solvent companies to shield their assets from litigants using protections that are normally reserved for bankrupt companies. The goal of a Texas two-step is for the parent company to gain a third-party release of all liabilities it assigned to its spinoff, thus preventing litigants from pursuing those claims against the parent.

And yet here we have multiple people trying to spin things as "Oh, J&J just want what is fair for the litigants!"

Fun fact: the majority of large corporations who utilize the Texas Two Step somehow manage to avoid paying out anything more than a token sum, either through the "new" entity that holds the liabilities, or the "old" entity which promised it'd fully fund the liability holding entity.

Georgia Pacific did this. Pledged $1B, ended up funding $175M. The entity went bankrupt three months later with 62,000 claims fighting over those scraps for mesothelioma (i.e. an average claimant getting less than $3,000 - before legal costs).

Saint-Gobain did the same thing. More building products liabilities. Less than $100M in assets and no operations to fund more than 6,000 asbestos claims per year.

> Gross testified that Saint-Gobain repeatedly misrepresented its intent in creating the subsidiary that eventually filed for bankruptcy, calling executives’ testimony and other statements “misleading” and “not truthful.” U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Craig Whitley followed Gross’s testimony last August with factual findings that included his own blistering critique of the executives’ statements as “contrary to the evidence,” saying the company’s story “strains credibility.”

Trane Technologies. Same deal.

And yet you and Matt talk about how the whole concept is "designed to be more fair for the claimants".

"Facts and analysis" in the three companies who have done this before J&J would disagree with you. Strongly.

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

#326

Post by FireBeyond »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #230
FireBeyond wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They still are. Just indirectly. They set the amount that they were willing to fund the subsidiary to the tune of. Must be nice, being able to say "Well, we'll give LTL $X and that can be used for settlements" while still throwing off nearly $X a year in profits, and 25% of X in shareholder dividends alone. Why should a company be allowed to set and determine how much liability it needs to pay?

This is the opposite of what happened. The court rejected their first two step attempt for not having a high enough payout and forced the subsidiary to have a 61.5 billion dollar payout maximum.

And yet in every company where the Texas Two Step has been done, funding, "requirements" etc., have been blatantly disregarded and the only ones who have been screwed over are said claimants.

Georgia Pacific, faced with several billions in claims, formed a subsidiary, and "pledged" to fund it to the full amount, starting with an initial $1B funding...

Actually only funded it to the value of $175M. Less than $3,000 per claimant for mesothelioma.

Less than $3,000... before claimant legal fees.

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

#327

Post by dumpsterdiver »

themitigating wrote: post #113
dumpsterdiver wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Further, if your company produces products that kill or injure people, then why should we show any interest in maintaining that companies existence with odd legal hacks like this? > This seems fairly debatable. To be fair, we might not have some of the drugs many of us are prescribed to us if we just cancelled every company that ever hurt anyone with experimental drugs.

Your use of "cancelled" seems to be an attempt to imply their actions are similar to a comedian using the N word. People died and they knew their product was dangerous. That's akin to murder.

> Your use of "cancelled" seems to be an attempt to imply their actions are similar to a comedian using the N word.

No, those are your words. The discussion I was participating in was talking about medication, not race warfare.

My statement was also generalized, but you apparently applied it to a specific scenario (which I am unfamiliar with) that fits your narrative.

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

#328

Post by pas »

mplanchard wrote: post #282
pas wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Research might be hard, harder than whatever else the rest of the world is doing, but the tenure system is not giving us the best researchers. It rewards those that are at the right place at the right time, it's mostly luck of the current spectacle, and then it sets those "accomplished" people up for failure as they eventually see their luck running out. They are very motivated to use less and less ethical tools for…

Weird how the continuous weakening of the tenure system over the past 20 years or more hasn’t upped the research quality then

Research quality went up in fields where the community (and/or the funding orgs) started demanding things like pre-registration, data availability, and so on.

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

#329

Post by pas »

AlexandrB wrote: post #147
pas wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Research might be hard, harder than whatever else the rest of the world is doing, but the tenure system is not giving us the best researchers. It rewards those that are at the right place at the right time, it's mostly luck of the current spectacle, and then it sets those "accomplished" people up for failure as they eventually see their luck running out. They are very motivated to use less and less ethical tools for…

This also describes the ultra-wealthy quite well, but few are in favor of a wealth tax.

That doesn't make those few wrong. (Also the number of supporters seems to be growing. Piketty's book - Capital in the 21st century - had big waves, and it argues for a wealth tax, for example.)

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

#330

Post by somenits »

FireBeyond wrote: post #325
somenits wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know you've lost the argument when your only response to actual facts and analysis is "yeah but what does this name sound like".

Alright then, here: The Texas two-step allows solvent companies to shield their assets from litigants using protections that are normally reserved for bankrupt companies. The goal of a Texas two-step is for the parent company to gain a third-party release of all liabilities it assigned to its spinoff, thus preventing litigants from pursuing those claims against the parent. And yet here we have multiple people trying…

Can you find a source saying that Georgia Pacific or any other company was able to use this process to shield the parent company from liability? I’m not finding anything to that effect. Everything I see complains about them using the process to improperly consolidate the cases.

>Georgia Pacific did this. Pledged $1B, ended up funding $175M. The entity went bankrupt three months later with 62,000 claims fighting over those scraps for mesothelioma (i.e. an average claimant getting less than $3,000 - before legal costs).

A source would be helpful here too. Is it because the judge ultimately only found them liable for a total of $175M? Or did the judge find them liable for more but was only able to find $175M in actual money to pay out with?

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