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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

#311

Post by littlestymaar »

scott_w wrote: post #294
orthecreedence wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

> The assets get stripped and sold off to the next company who can just continue to do the same thing.

But the shareholders of J&J lose everything, making the ones of the next company think twice before doing the same… Whereas with the shell company bankruptcy, J&J shareholders losses are limited, and they still own and run the company that killed thousands of people.

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

#312

Post by Panzer04 »

littlestymaar wrote: post #136
Panzer04 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given J&J has yet to actually incur these damages, declaring bankruptcy seems a bit over the top.

When you factor in the fact that this company has (knowingly) killed multiple times more people than Osama Bin Laden, maybe it's not “over the top”…

In what way have they done that? I'm sure there.must be a massive lawsuit about it.

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

#313

Post by littlestymaar »

Panzer04 wrote: post #312
littlestymaar wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you factor in the fact that this company has (knowingly) killed multiple times more people than Osama Bin Laden, maybe it's not “over the top”…

In what way have they done that? I'm sure there.must be a massive lawsuit about it.

Didn't you even skim the article? There's a short summary at the beginning:

> J&J is facing more than 38,000 lawsuits alleging that the company's talc products, including its Baby Powder, were contaminated by asbestos and caused cancers including ovarian cancer and mesothelioma

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

#314

Post by fennecfoxy »

andsoitis wrote: post #214
fennecfoxy wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

e) influencing law and legal/justice/political systems such that you get an unfair advantage, using the resources you already have, which was the entire point of my point; you think it's right that a company facing legal action for something they did wrong can spin off a subsidiary to take the fall, being made bankrupt in a laughably short time?

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

#315

Post by ClumsyPilot »

scott_w wrote: post #310
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!"

This is a ridiculous comparison. Murder is criminal law and we’re talking about civil law (tort). The two are handled completely differently, with different laws and procedures.

Yeah I know - unlike corporations, individuals can’t kill people and escape criminal responsibility. It happens time and again, look at DuPont, Boeing max, etc.

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

#316

Post by somenits »

harimau777 wrote: post #172
somenits wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you weren't allowed to see medical bills and such, then you were probably tasked with determining other kinds of damages (e.g. emotional distress) that are totally unrelated to those.

It seems to me that medical bills would be a major contributor to distress.

How would you like it if you were a plaintiff suffering severe lifelong emotional distress but the jury saw that the medical bills were only $1000? It's not as simple as you make it out to be.

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

#317

Post by somenits »

shkkmo wrote: post #216
somenits wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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.

This is purposefully obtuse. If a few courts award 5 plaintiffs the entire pot of gold, then there's nothing left for all the other claimants. And of course it's in J&J's interest to consolidate the cases. It's also in the plaintiffs' interests, especially those who weren't first.

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

#318

Post by somenits »

tedivm wrote: post #259
boringg wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Potentially but it's also a waste of our judicial system resources to have 12 identical cases going at the same time. However if you like paying for legal admin fees on both side its a great way to make sure lawyers get paid.

There are other ways to accomplish this other than bankruptcy. Judges combine cases together all the time.

That's not true. Judges can't just take cases from different districts and different states, different court systems altogether, and consolidate them. Plaintiffs can choose to file a class action, but you can't force them into one. If all the cases are in federal court, you can kind of consolidate into an MDL (multi-district litigation), but that just consolidates certain pre-trial procedures. Unless they settle, the cases still get sent back out to the districts they came from for resolution by the original judges and separate juries.

Bankruptcy is one way around this.

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

#319

Post by FireBeyond »

akgoel wrote: post #17
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…

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 assists you to elegantly dance around your liabilities?"

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

#320

Post by FireBeyond »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #228
iancarroll wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a pretty well-documented strategy that has been done several times: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_two-step_bankruptcy Not sure why you are treating it as an absurd concept.

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?

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