> Johnson & Johnson created LTL in 2021 in a maneuver to shield itself from the talc litigation, but an earlier bankruptcy filing by the unit was challenged by the plaintiffs and dismissed this year by a U.S. appeals court, which ruled that a bankruptcy wasn’t the right way to resolve the matter.
I'm unsure of the criteria for the reward, but it appears that they considered it an impressive effort to defend an unsympathetic client.
The public benefit from presenting a vigorous defense in all cases (not just ones with sympathetic defendants) is to require the prosecution, as a matter of course, to actually prove their case in accordance with the law, something which should be required in a fair court system.
How does a corporation filing a sham bankruptcy to avoid paying out a legally mandated penalty improve justice?
I can just as easily say that this tactic degrades prosecutorial effectiveness because it disincentives lawyers from taking cases. The corporations will just spin off and kill a business unit and no one gets compensated.
Because Captailism has corrupted our institutions to the point that money rules everything. Democracy and Justice is only for those with enough cash. Like the big4 accounting firms, they arnt the big 4 because they serve the public the public interest. They are the goto because they have the influence and the knowledge to extract as much cash as possible from democracies.
Her performance as a trial lawyer in these cases has been nothing short of average. It’s shocking that she managed to eek out any defense verdicts at all in the underlying litigation.
If the law is the primary obstacle preventing the majority from beating unscrupulous CEOs to within an inch of their life, then perhaps the majority should consider passing legislation that permits this as the current set of laws has abjectly failed.
This tactic wasn't as bad as you imply. J&J put the greater of $61.5 billion or the value of its consumer division (as determined when the paperwork was done) in LTL to cover claims and added itself as a creditor in last place. The idea was they would get back any value less than that after a result of the bankruptcy.
In this case, they would have recovered over $50 billion from the bankrupt company after the suit was paid off (assuming this deal covers all parties).
You'd only go to that extra work and complexity if you believed it would potentially be beneficial. Presumably, they feared the possibility of a multi-hundred billion dollar verdict.
That they didn't need the tactic in the end doesn't make it any less sleazy to have attempted it.
Like I said, I don't actually think it protects more money. It was pretty much secured by the value of the subsidiary responsible.
On the contrary, doing that much extra work and complexity pays off mostly in organizational ways. Letting the current business operate without overly worrying about the progress of the trial (instead just having value removed by it), managing multiple plaintiffs, etc.
And if the total amount of lawsuits exceeds the value of the company, it prevents the earlier plaintiffs from getting 100% and the last plaintiffs from getting 0% (which results in more expensive lawsuits).
> It was pretty much secured by the value of the subsidiary responsible.
Which is less than the value of all of J&J, which should all be at risk for egregious misconduct.
> And if the total amount of lawsuits exceeds the value of the company, it prevents the earlier plaintiffs from getting 100% and the last plaintiffs from getting 0% (which results in more expensive lawsuits).
Sure, but it prevents everyone from getting what they should get from J&J in that scenario.
> Sure, but it prevents everyone from getting what they should get from J&J in that scenario.
There's no way to give everyone what they're owed if there isn't enough money to go around. An orderly procedure is better than everyone rushing in with sharp elbows, and that's exactly why we have bankruptcy laws and courts - a system that works very well on the whole.
> There's no way to give everyone what they're owed if there isn't enough money to go around.
There's at least more money (significantly so!) in J&J as a whole than one of J&J's subsidiaries.
If my teenager had a car accident and injured you, I don't get to spin them off into a new standalone family unit and say "gee, sorry, you can't sue me!"
> There's at least more money (significantly so!) in J&J as a whole than one of J&J's subsidiaries.
No there isn't. 61.5 billion in this subsidy, while the equity value of the whole company is 76.8 billion.
> If my teenager had a car accident and injured you, I don't get to spin them off into a new standalone family unit and say "gee, sorry, you can't sue me!"
Depends where you are; in a lot of states you wouldn't be liable.
J&J's market cap is a bit over $400B, with assets in the nearly $200B range. I guarantee you the talc subsidiary isn't 80% of J&J's total value.
> Depends where you are; in a lot of states you wouldn't be liable.
Take one of those states, then. In California, the parent is civilly liable if they granted the teen permission to drive the car. Should disowning your kid be a viable way out of that?
> In California, the parent is civilly liable if they granted the teen permission to drive the car. Should disowning your kid be a viable way out of that?
I mean, we have plenty of stories of people divorcing to avoid liability for their partner's medical/end-of-life care costs. So this stuff isn't limited to companies.
"The Texas two-step allows solvent companies to shield their assets from litigants using protections that are normally reserved for bankrupt companies"
So I find your claims highly dubious that "wasn't as bad"
So I have an observation - when someone says we should be 'tough on crime', they never seem to be talking about corporate malfeasance and fraud. They always mean 'little people' crime.
How can we make a campaign slogan specific to shit like this?
Should we call it 'tough on some crime'? 'Tough on big crime?'
This makes sense to me and might just need some context. My grandfather died from mesothelioma - a dust based disease caused, in his case, by asbestos. As a 20/30 year old plumber, he was using asbestos products without any protection as it was assumed to be safe. Later in life, he developed mesothelioma which effectively causes your lungs to fail.
These diseases develop over time so there are claims that are unknown at this point in time but will appear in the future. It makes sense for a fund to be set up to cover future claims.
What makes you think it isn't? The courts don't randomly choose numbers. Actuaries are involved to calculate the future cost of these events in order to determine what funding is required today.
This case has been interesting from the start, given how weak the scientific evidence was. Has anyone improved on that, proving a causal link? This settlement sounds like J&J just trying to get the witch hunt to quit bleeding them. Which I suppose describes most corporate settlements, but still.
> Johnson & Johnson executives knew for decades about the risk of asbestos exposure linked to its talc products, including the famous baby powder
> Asbestos was first linked to ovarian cancer in 1958.
> In October, Johnson & Johnson recalled 33,000 bottles of baby powder after the Food and Drug Administration said it discovered evidence of chrysotile asbestos in a bottle
There is no need to establish scientific evidence for every single decision--in this case the causal link is already there (not to mention, who would fund a long term study on this?); it's just common sense (and knowledge) to assume long-term exposure to products containing carcinogens can elevate risk of cancer. Of course these corporations would never voluntarily admit to any wrongdoings.
Given that there are distinct demographics that use this powder disproportionately (e.g. professional gymnasts and climbers), shouldn't an increased cancer rate be very visible?
The demographic that was harmed disproportionately was actually women, poor black women in the south in particular. There were campaigns that promoted talc as a way for poor women to "stay fresh" for cheap. You'd line your panties with it. It was common, and something that was often done for decades starting at a very young age. This use case is the where the link between talc exposure and ovarian cancer comes from.
We see repeatedly in such cases that employees, especially so executives, have known about the dangers of a product often for years and rather than take action to withdraw it they cover over and hide the facts—witness the tobacco industry.
This problem could almost certainly be put to rest if not only the companies were held responsible but equally so their employees. If employees knew life imprisonment was a likely outcome for their 'silence' things would almost certainly change.
This is obvious, what is not is why governments repeatedly fail to implement such legislation. That is, why is commerce so effective at being able to block governments from legislating thus?
> equally so their employees. If employees knew life imprisonment was a likely outcome for their 'silence' things would almost certainly change.
They would choose to not work. In fact, no-one would be under that rule.
Liability must stop somewhere, and it stops at the corporate charter. Otherwise the risk is too great for any employee, to be held personally liable for actions of the company, but don't get the rewards, or call shots.
I simply do not believe that. If the rules are set correctly and everyone understands them then it's easy to work within those rules. For example, everyone knows not to fiddle the company's books—if one does and is caught then tough, one suffers the consequences.
Let's be clear about this, we're not talking about genuine mistakes or unforseen consequences, force majeure/Act of God or such but deliberate coverups when evidence of problems presents itself.
The rules would be simple, anyone who became aware of a dangerous issue would be liable to report it and be strongly protected at law from retribution by vindictive management. I would add this would be no different to Occupational Health and Safety law that already exists in many jurisdictions.
__
Edit: such laws would also be framed to avoid unnecessary damage to a company's reputation from trivial or even vindictive actions by wayward employees. Ways of reporting—both within a company and to government agencies—to ensure companies don't suffer undue harm already exist in some existing and proposed whistleblower legislation. They could easily be adopted.
For context Johnson and Johnson's total revenue for 2022 was $94.94 billion [1], and this settlement is to be paid out over 25 years. So the total cost to them is about 1.3 days of revenue per year at their current revenue levels. Factor in inflation and growth, and it'll end up being a few hours of revenue per year.
More hard hitting justice for corporate malfeasance.
First off, no it doesn't. Their profit for 2022 is $18 billion. This is less than half of one year of profit even, again spread out over 25 years. During which inflation + revenue growth will further dilute it. They even have $23 billion cash on hand. [1] I'd also add income is a regularly gamed metric for tax avoidance purposes.
But really the whole point here is that without painful penalties, there is no deterrence whatsoever. Seeing 'megacorp knowingly sold asbestos tainted product for decades' is not even going to elicit a 'omg I can't believe it' from anybody not born yesterday. Nor will the fact that they faced a civil penalty that was but the mildest of prods on the wrist, and 0 criminal penalties. We seemingly have a government completely incapable of holding large corporations accountable for their actions. And that is seriously not normal, nor acceptable.
If I gave 40,000 people cancer as an individual and killed several thousands of people as a result, I wouldn't lose 3 years of disposal income. I would lose all of it, forever, as I sit and rot in prison for the rest of my life.
This is the sort of punishment we need for corporations.
They should pierce the corporate veil and go after any individuals who had personal involvement in the matter while being fully aware of what the consequences of their actions were. That way, the livelihood of other employees who have no say in the matter is not affected, and only those who directly participated are held accountable.
Which specific criminal law do you think they have violated? Please provide a citation to applicable state or federal criminal code. What they did was shitty, but I'm skeptical whether it would be possible for prosecutors to win a criminal conviction.
The way that negligent homicide is defined it would be impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a particular person's fatal cancer was directly caused by talc. A strong probability isn't sufficient for a criminal conviction.
Some new law would likely be needed. How could such a law be written in a manner that satisfies the vagueness doctrine?
You're really missing the point. Criminal laws must satisfy the vagueness doctrine or else all convictions will be thrown out on appeal. There are literally centuries of case law in this. So your comment makes no sense and displays a lack of understanding about the basics of the criminal justice system.
I did miss the point. I thought "vagueness doctrine" was just a term invented here because it kinda sounds like it. You know, a catch all to deter people who want to make rules or regulations.
Considering laws exist for many types of actions it should be possible to make one in which knowingly producing and distributing any product for any price that you know to cause harm, and that harm is not made of aware of to the public in an obvious way, should be held liable for any damages that occur from the use of that product as indicated by the instructions
This includes people that approve of the actions and/or responsible for the subordinates involved in the production/approval of said products, in the company/subsidiary/any related entity, as long as that person was provided with the information or access to information that would allow them to ascertain the risk with a reasonable amount of accuracy. However, it shan't be required to show that person actually consumed or understood that information if it was expected that they do so.
The punishment must be but can not be limited to monetary fines which can not be purged through bankruptcy. <something about jail here>
Let's consider, for a moment, that they paid nine billion (with a B) as a settlement because they thought that it would be cheaper than the outcome of fully litigating it. Which is to say, $9B was the cheaper option.
Regardless of the numbers, for that to be true, you've got to be pretty convinced you've fucked up really hard.
What do you think the lawsuit was about? You think J&J is being forced to pay the measly 8.9 billion just because they want this to go away? 40,000 people got cancer that we know of. People should be in jail.
Assumably this is why there’s a trial. J&J is willing to pay $9B to avoid one; this leads me to believe that they think they have a significant risk of having cancer be linked to their product.
40,000 people claimed it did and followed through with legal action. Sure, maybe only a percentage of them actually got it from talc. But globally, what percent of people who did get cancer from talc actually sue? Also likely a low percentage.
That's not how the system works. It would be very difficult to convict you as an individual of a felony that would send you to prison. The burden of proof in criminal cases is much higher.
Even if you were found liable in civil court you wouldn't lose all of your income forever. You would be able to declare personal bankruptcy and clear the debt.
>>Even if you were found liable in civil court you wouldn't lose all of your income forever. You would be able to declare personal bankruptcy and clear the debt.
I guess it depends.
From the net:
"Instances in which a court ordered judgment won’t be overridden by bankruptcy include debts related to:
Student loans
Any debt owed to the government, including taxes and fines
Court ordered awards related to criminal proceedings"
I would imagine Google as a corporation would be more careful about giving people cancer. “We are too big for accountability” has been a bad idea every time it has been used in America.
J&J should be punitively punished for knowing about asbestos in their product and hiding it from the public. Whether or not anyone died as a result, corporations should not be allowed to be malfeasant and get away with it because only a small number of people were provably harmed. Corporations should have to behave like the cops are watching them.
> Johnson & Johnson executives knew for decades about the risk of asbestos exposure linked to its talc products, including the famous baby powder it began selling 129 years ago. After years of pushing back on researchers and scientists, the company began facing a flood of lawsuits in recent years, along with government investigations and lawmaker inquiries.
> Who is shilling? The data suggesting asbestos in talc is a real health hazard is tenuous at best.
If you really believe that preposterous claim, put "asbestos" on the package and see how many people buy it. You sails will fall off a cliff. All your other products will be treated like they are radioactive too.
You want free market? That's free market for you. If you lie about the product, you are defrauding the customer.
But somehow fraud only ever sends the little people to jail.
> A bunch of class action lawyers just made $30B dollars.
Where is this number coming from? The listed settlement amount is an order of magnitude less than this, and lawyers typically get some percentage (15-30?), which has to be approved by the court. I'm not saying they didn't make a lot of money here (and for full disclosure, I used to be a lawyer), but I'm not seeing how they raked in tens of billions.
Who are you even responding to? No one's arguing the science, they're talking about the size of the settlement relative to the corporation's financials.
> “Three years of profit” over 25 years, not accounting for inflation
It looks like an $8.9bn settlement after $7.4bn in litigation expenses [1]. I would guess that is a substantial portion of J&J's total profits from talc-based products, inflation adjusted. Were that product an independent company, this would have bankrupted it. That's decent deterrence.
If they spent such an inordinate amount trying to escape, that is not part of deterrence, it is a gamble that big boys can take and they took and it didn't go as well. That gamble, or at least a good part of 7 billion, is their own fault and doing and not an external punishment, and importantly, doesn't absolve the final punishment, not even morally. Even more crucial, that money went to the dirtiest type of rich law firms (it is kind of an offence on its own!) and not to settling the damages at all.
No, but it is always a moral decision somewhere to fight vigorously, and it is money thrown not at making things right. Oh but it is always done, it is routine, etc. Well? If a company is built to act, on behalf of board, as selfish as actually spending as much with lawyers (of course, because they want to make their point and hope to set a precedent that says: executives, do not refrain to do evil for a good buck! we can deal with that crapp later--and should we as a society find it okay that corporate america works like that, or can work like that?) as the amount they were finally charged, then we can reason that if they spent that much (almost the full penalty amount!) on a gamble, then the amount is not really a worthy punishment at all! Seen another way, almost as much cash flowed to faceless lawyer gentry as to making up for the thousands who had cancer! And is this supposed to be a healthcare company today? J&J laughs at the face of law-abiding society who is apparently powerless to deter, that is my thinking.
If you screw up you should stand up and take responsibility over that screw up. Not shy away and try to claim innocence. Honestly there should be a punishment on top of the actual penalty for a company that is proven to have intentionally done something like this.
If you know you screwed up and instead of taking ownership you play the blame game, if you lose the lawsuit, you should be responsible not just for the actual damages but also you should be required to payout 100% of your own lawyer fees to the defendant as well.
I’m not happy with a company causing provable harm with criminal negligence simply being deterred from doing it again. No, I want justice, I want them to be punished, because I want to see justice. I want all their profits taken away from them, and possibly even more.
I’m not even convinced this is actually a good deterrence. Companies have been criminally negligent since the birth of capitalism. They have caused immeasurable harm in multiple schemes in many ill guided attempts of making more and more money. These companies have gotten several fines, some CEOs have even been imprisoned, others have been forced into bankruptcy, and yet we see companies being criminally negligent, causing more harm, starting new malicious schemes, again and again. If these fines are supposed to be a deterrence, they are obviously not working.
I agree that we should find a better deterrence, but can we cool it with blaming “capitalism”? Is socialism some new drug that will suddenly eradicate selfishness? Has there ever been a documented case of a society that went socialist and no one did anything selfish? The problem isn’t the system, it’s the people.
There is no amount of “process improvement” that is gonna change basic human nature.
I never blamed capitalism for this. I merely stated that this happens under capitalism, and it keeps happening, even when the justice system is applied in an effort of deterrence.
Now I do believe that capitalism is a bad system that should be abolished. However I am aware that that isn’t going to happen any time soon. In the meantime I’ll settle for companies and CEOs being held responsible for the crimes they commit under the influence of the profit motive. I’d also be happy if we would do something to abolish the class of ultra-wealthy, or at the very least strip them off their influence over our democracy.
You are explicitly blaming capitalism for this, as you seem to imply some other system wouldn't allow for human greed and selfishness, but my point was that those are natural human traits and every single societal system ever conceived must deal with them. There is no system that can be created that will somehow magically remove those traits.
If you wanna abolish capitalism, what system do you think should take it's place that wouldn't have human selfishness?
Just to be clear:
> I merely stated that this happens under capitalism, and it keeps happening, even when the justice system is applied in an effort of deterrence.
is an explicit accusation against capitalism in exclusion of some other system.
As I said, above, humans have been negligent since time immemorial. People put in charge of companies in socialist systems are also criminally negligent, usually though there are even fewer consequences for them.
The overall point holds, but this is more like 0.75 years of profit, or less ($424B market cap x 2.76% dividend yield is a basic calculation, but there's all sorts of accounting reasons why this might underestimate actual profit).
> An annual filing with the SEC shows that J&J paid $7.4 billion in litigation expenses between 2020 and 2021, with the majority spent on legal costs related to talc claims.
It’s sad to me that situations where companies cause negative outcomes for people are paid for by fees and are labeled “the cost of doing business”. I saw a post here the other day that said that, rather than releasing products and later the burden be on others to prove they are unsafe, the burden should be on companies to ensure their products are safe prior to releasing them to the public. Money does not solve issues; you can compensate people for the cost of their cancer treatments, etc., but I’m sure they’d probably rather never have had cancer to begin with. The wrong can’t be retroactively undone.
I think the simpler solution is to start holding the people in charge of the companies accountable for the actions they greenlight and continue to approve.
Johnson and Johnson knew their product had asbestos in it. It seems absurd they're not facing criminal charges. If I, as an individual, sold an asbestos tainted powder to people that resulted in deaths and cancer then there's a very good chance that I'd be spending the rest of my life in prison, even if I didn't knowingly do so. But if I do it as a massive global corporation, on a far wider scale, and with full knowledge of what I'm doing, my penalty is... nothing? I mean literally they're not even facing criminal charges, this was a civil suit. It just makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and the stupidity of it all is enough to make one angry.
I don’t disagree with you; I think personal liability is in order in some situations, too (see: 2008 subprime mortgage crisis). However, again, these actions attempt to equalize after the fact. I suppose they also disincentivize beforehand. But why stop at disincentivizing the behavior, which requires relying on people to be rational actors, and instead not allow the behavior at all?
We have organizations like the FDA, etc., to ensure that the food and drugs we put in our bodies are safe. The reality is the gamut of technologies, products, and environments that impact our health are far more broad than “food and drug”; why not regulate them the same way?
> the burden should be on companies to ensure their products are safe prior to releasing them to the public
I don't know if this policy would make the world a better place. There are so many life saving or life improving technologies that would be delayed because of the burden of proving them to be "safe"
Really, is this the argument you want to actually make? That we shouldn't regulate things that people put on/into their body because we might hurt the "little guy?"
Mind you I've been hearing about this mythical "little guy" that massive multinational corporations love to trot out when it comes to increasing regulations or taxes against them but over the course of my lifetime all I've seen is a massive increase in power and consolidation from these companies.
It's so odd realizing you live in a dystopian cyberpunk future without the pretty trinkets to go along with it.
This is the future all of us kids from the 1970s and 1980s BUILT on the premise of "wouldnt it be cool if...." -- We (and I am personally guilty, as are many HNers, of facilitating the "wouldnt it be cool if Cyberpunk tropes were reality?"
I helped build spying (marketing) infra, sentiment measures etc...
But the "little guy" that bigPharma preys upon is the 'patient' J&J needs corporate capital punishment, because this isnt the first time or only incident of them causing negative outcomes for profit (recall their tainted vaccines?)
> rather than releasing products and later the burden be on others to prove they are unsafe, the burden should be on companies to ensure their products are safe prior to releasing them to the public.
I personally agree with the precautionary principle and think there should be stricter requirements for certain classes of new products, but the best solution is probably some type of compromise based on level of newness and possible danger.
The core problem is the "unknown unknown". There's no upper limit to how much testing you should do to ensure a product is safe because the space of possible dangers is nearly infinite. So any policy will be a balancing act of false positives and false negatives and what levels of each are tolerable. I think this is the proper question and it is not an easy one to answer.
Why aren't there consumer products unions that certify products as safe ? That way, the people who care can get the certified product, and the rest can accept risk.
It won't work for something like cigarettes where the risk is external but if the risk is to you, then you can manage it this way.
Thing is people have been using talcum powder for many many centuries. It's just ground up rock...
The thing is when you gather something from nature there will be naturally contamination. The claim is about asbestos being in the talc powder which is also a rock...
The thing is asbestos can occur naturally in and dirt all around the world. There are some places even in the US where dust storms are more dangerous just because this fact. Here's just a short memo about naturally occurring asbestos.
https://ncceh.ca/sites/default/files/Naturally_occurring_asb...
I am not saying J&J should get off scotch free if they knew some sources of talc they were using had high levels of asbestos. However, I am gonna say it's not surprising that there may be some contamination. Moreover that's just one form of natural occurring contamination. There other minerals that naturally occur that also are unwanted contaminates such as heavy metals and so forth. What matters is are the contaminants reasonable low for a naturally sourced product since it's not possible to have zero contamination.
There are, such as Underwriters Laboratories. But the human body is such a complex machine that it’s infeasible to do the experiments necessary to provide the kinds of guarantees that one would desire. Many effects have multiple causes and can show up decades later.
Ah, so we should label the products with the appropriate certification and if it is missing, consumers should choose their position on the risk-reward curve.
In Who Can Be Happy and Free in Russia?, a dissenting peasant has to be lashed out by the barin's command, who thinks he is still landed gentry but in reality is being fooled by the compassionate and loyal to the bone downtrodden peasants, who rather own their lands now but keep playing a farce. The community leader calls the dissenting peasant to a room within earshot of the barin, gives him as much vodka as his morals need as to ask him to yell loudly while the leader makes beating noises and says nasty things to him. The peasant commits suicide soon after in the story.
Curious as to what laws shield the executives of these companies from facing criminal charges. Any lawyers in the house? Where is the line legally drawn?
Revenue, as opposed to profit, seems like a particularly poor metric. But better still is going to be market cap. Their cap is ~$400 billion. So this might be a little over 2.25% of the value of a giant corporation. Maybe halve that because of the time value of money. It seems extremely doubtful the talcum powder business never accounted for more than 1% of the value of the company, so this is probably a pretty big fine.
Does it matter the portion of the smaller company? The parent company is responsible for its actions, and that is enough. A giant corporation that does outright damage (and is caught out) should get a sentence as to be repressed in the behavior so executives think twice next time, that is what matters. 2% of value or possibly less is hardly a threatening indictment. Why should not a company be brought to its knees? You know, the same as citizens are? There are jobs and families? So are there on the side of damaged parties, generally. And it has competitors who can do the company's part just as well as they can.
If you're talking about compensatory damages, the size of the talc business doesn't matter. J&J has to make people whole.
If you're talking about punitive damages, the size matters. Making sure that the action is non-profitable is important. But at the same time, you can only expect so much oversight of small parts of a company.
2% of the net worth of a Fortune 50 company is not a small fine.
> Why should not a company be brought to its knees? You know, the same as citizens are?
I'd flip this question around. Why should citizens be brought to their knees? But often, they are not. Certainly not with civil actions.
Well, one way citizens are brought to their knees is precisely because big cos have much unchecked power, directly or indirectly through the state (lobbying and bribe corruption.)
What needs to change is the nature of the punishment. As long as it's monetary and only monetary, the punishment is negligible.
Put one or two executives in jail and things will look different. Rob a bank, you go to jail. Rob people of their lives and you keep your well paid job and your company get slapped on the wrist.
Ultimately, the fines are paid by consumers. But jail time? That's a payment made by the guilty.
The company liked to do a lot of performative charity events to convince ourselves that we weren't having a net negative impact on the world catering to some of the most vile corporate clients on the planet
A lot of talc mining in the the Americas has basically stopped because of these lawsuits, and it seems very unlikely we'll ever see talc-based consumer products return to the shelves.
As an aside, this has been a big deal for the ceramics industry, which uses talc in the production of clay bodies as well as glazes (think tile manufacturing -- DalTile uses so much talc that they recently bought their own mine to secure their supply).
Talc is an excellent material[1] that has been in use for decades, but its availability to the public has typically been driven by the demands of mining done on behalf of cosmetic industries. Since these lawsuits began and the talc supply dried up, ceramic industry has been scrambling for the past ~3 years to find alternatives with similar chemistry and working properties.
The network effects of industry and mining are pretty interesting (and frustrating to hobbyists, when your favorite materials disappear!).
My guess is it'll never make a comeback. You can still get it, but maybe not in the formulation you used to get. I can't imagine too many companies willing to risk another class action just to make a few of us happier. Add it to the ever growing list of things we've had to give up on the altars of lawyers and social media.
The Saran trade name was first owned by Dow Chemical for polyvinylidene chloride (PVDC), along with other monomers. The formulation was changed to the less effective polyethylene in 2004 due to the chlorine content of PVDC.
If I might have played with baby powder when I was a kid around 1996-1997, and I might even inhaled or huffed it (no way to remember now, I was 6 years old), how concern should I be?
The smallest amount of concern possible. The scientific record is mixed. Some studies find a small effect and others find no statistically significant link. Worst case scenario is 5ish additional cases of ovarian cancer in 100,000 people.
AFAIK no link has been shown between lung cancer and talc. Likely none exists. Lung cancer links to stuff like Asbestos is limited to people like miners and factory workers who breathed the stuff in all day every day for decades. But generally speaking particulates are linked to lung cancer and other lung issues. Probably best to not breathe in clouds of the stuff but I wouldn't worry about normal usage.
My concern would be mostly on the issue of asbestos contamination. I tried to find if there is any known contamination issue in the 90s, but my google-fu got nothing.
These lawsuits are from people who developed ovarian cancer after regularly using talcum powder for years or decades. Maybe your youthful use of talcum powder gave you an ever so slightly higher chance of developing lung cancer, but it's generally regular exposure that causes problems. I wouldn't be concerned.
Brake pads were made of, not just possibly-contaminated-with, asbestos in that era, so assuming you lived somewhere with cars it wouldn't be a significant source.
(but don't inhale rocks, they are bad for your lungs)
Yeah I went down the asbestos rabbit hole a few years ago. It is insane how much stuff was made with it. There’s basically a non-zero background level at all time
What percentage of the top of the J&J org chart is spending the rest of their lives in prison, for putting asbestos into the air of baby nurseries in the 21st century?
When did HackerNews get so hysterical. The evidence for talc causing ovarian cancer is extremely weak, maybe 5 additional cases per 100,000 women at worst. It makes no damn sense as a cervix only allows anything to head inside about 1 day per month. Are dudes getting testicular cancer from talc powder traveling up their pee hole? Gametes are like stem cells and prone to cancer forming mutations. It seems like all the undersexed white knights are ruling the attitudes of the day.
Desire to crucify any and all entities for even the tiniest bit of fault or risk is handicapping the US economy. So much of the US GDP is about avoiding liability and nailing someone with liability.
See the recent thread about pharmacies having to pay huge fines for dispensing opioids as prescribed by a doctor. So now, pharmacies simply will not dispense them. People lose the freedom to get opioids for legitimate use, governments get plausible deniability they did something, and all for the political show of holding someone responsible.
> If a bankruptcy court approves it, the agreement will resolve all current and future claims involving Johnson & Johnson products that contain talc, such as baby powder, the company said.
When people later (inevitably) discover they got lung cancer, and it's traced to Johnsons & Johnsons Baby Asbestos, can they still sue J&J?
I think the problem wasn't the talc itself, but that it was contaminated with asbestos in the process of mining the talc and turning it into talcum powder.
So presumably it's been addressed through closer monitoring, but the article does say that they plan to phase out talcum powder worldwide and replace it with cornstarch powder.
Edit: Apparently there are some studies which suggest talc itself could also be carcinogenic. I suppose this may be one reason why the issue is so confusing, because it's really 2 issues in one: a) whether talc that's sold is contaminated with asbestos, and b) whether talc itself is carcinogenic.
> but that it was contaminated with asbestos in the process of mining the talc and turning it into talcum powder.
Allegedly. There's really good evidence that asbestos was making its way into he product in the 1970s, but evidence starts to get really thin starting in the 1990s. This is a settlement after all, so I wouldn't call it the final word on the subject.
I think " b) whether talc itself is carcinogenic." is a much more interesting question, but probably hard to answer at this point.
Don't know if that is the case here, but that possibility cannot be discounted. It is a definite pattern for litigation attorneys. Studies can be easily manufactured.
Talc is mined, not manufactured. They weren't adding asbestos to talc, they were mining and selling talc which was contaminated with asbestos because the asbestos and talc were coincident in the ground.
What about all of the people internationally who were impacted by this? If American companies are distributing dangerous products overseas they should be held to full account for that as well.
This is terribly misleading. Net income is income after expenses. And the settlement is also being paid out over 25 years, which further dilutes the impact. It is 9.3% of their revenue for the current year, spread out over 25 years! So that works out to 0.37% of their revenue per year. That's already absurd, but now factor in inflation and revenue growth, and it's going to end up being a completely negligible figure per year.
This would like if you earn 100k per year and after all of your rent/food/gas and other expenses were paid for, you had $10k left. And you were fined $5k, which you were able to payout at a rate of $200 per year for the next 25 years. For causing cancer and other diseases to tens of thousands of people.
To put this in a more tangible context. A person getting 100 000 USD in annual income, being fined 50k for being criminally negligent, causing provable harm (say they injured several children by driving into a playground while drunk). 50k is big, but not huge.
In this metaphor, its more like they injured several children by driving into a playground while drunk, then woke up the next day and did it again. And again. And again. And carried on doing so for years. While somehow profiting off their playground rampages.
And then got one 50k fine a few years down the line.
The analogy is slightly off tho, J&J does not only do talc, it's a huge conglomerate.
IMO it's a sizeable enough amount to affect the company for a while, but I think it's unlikely it will prevent the same issues forever, simply because people in the company change and the underlying incentives are not influenced by a single event like this.
Edit: what I meant is that it the analogy would be like "this dishonest bit I did for this marginal extra income screwed my whole income"
I think this is ignoring the criminal part of criminal negligence. A crime was committed, innocent people got hurt. Justice isn’t served by merely nullifying the venture in a capital sense. No, a true justice punishes the responsible by stripping away their freedom. In a corporate sense this means taking away all your corporate profits way beyond what your little venture would have given you, imprisoning the people responsible (including CEOs), and even disbanding the whole company if the crime is severe enough.
I’ll make another ill guided attempt at an analogy. If J&J was a criminal gang, and decided to venture into a new smuggling scheme. Then got caught, but as a punishment, they only had to pay a portion of their annual profits in a fine, but people would consider it huge because it was way bigger than what this smuggling scheme would have given them. Additionally no bosses were imprisoned.
A true justice system shouldn’t treat a malicious company any differently than a criminal gang.
> I’ll make another ill guided attempt at an analogy. If J&J was a criminal gang, and decided to venture into a new smuggling scheme. Then got caught, but as a punishment, they only had to pay a portion of their annual profits in a fine, but people would consider it huge because it was way bigger than what this smuggling scheme would have given them. Additionally no bosses were imprisoned.
I can’t tell what you’re trying to say. If people consider it huge, that means it’s a good punishment, no?
> I think this is ignoring the criminal part of criminal negligence. A crime was committed, innocent people got hurt. Justice isn’t served by merely nullifying the venture in a capital sense. No, a true justice punishes the responsible by stripping away their freedom. In a corporate sense this means taking away all your corporate profits way beyond what your little venture would have given you, imprisoning the people responsible (including CEOs), and even disbanding the whole company if the crime is severe enough.
Putting thousands of people out work because a small segment of a business did a bad thing isn’t wise
What makes a good punishment is a pretty massive debate within philosophy. I’m of the opinion that you can easily tell that a punishment is too lax when the victims, the near community around the victims, and/or a large majority of the society in which the victims or the perpetrators reside, that if none of these get a sense of justice from the punishment, than the punishment is insufficient. A company paying a portion of their annual profit over two decades for knowingly risking cancer onto their customers probably fails every single of these groups.
> Putting thousands of people out work because a small segment of a business did a bad thing isn’t wise
This is a hyperbole. Courts can split up companies, they can remove leaderships, they can confiscate the stocks, heck, if you are so worried about the workers, perhaps you should ask your legislator to introduce a law where a malicious company can be ordered to reorganize as a coop and given to the workers.
> This is a hyperbole. Courts can split up companies, they can remove leaderships, they can confiscate the stocks, heck, if you are so worried about the workers, perhaps you should ask your legislator to introduce a law where a malicious company can be ordered to reorganize as a coop and given to the workers.
I’m confused how you can accuse me of hyperbole for stating that putting thousands of workers out of work is bad while it was you that suggesting disbanding the company for big enough crimes.
Splitting up a company isn’t really a punishment. Probably good for competition though.
Taking away stock is just a fine.
Reorganizing as a coop is just kind of dumb.
> A company paying a portion of their annual profit over two decades for knowingly risking cancer onto their customers probably fails every single of these groups.
How about 2,000x the annual revenue generated from the activity?
> How about 2,000x the annual revenue generated from the activity?
No. Companies should not be allowed to do crime, and the punishment should be proportional to the harm they caused, not to the revenue hypothesized by the scheme.
A crime syndicate does not have to pay 2000 times the amount they would have gained by smuggling drugs, no their mules go to jail, their CEO is hunted down by the military, and their whole organization is disbanded. Nobody cares about the workers in this instance (I wonder why).
> Reorganizing as a coop is just kind of dumb.
Yeah, Well, You know, that’s just like, your opinion, man.
> No. Companies should not be allowed to do crime, and the punishment should be proportional to the harm they caused, not to the revenue hypothesized by the scheme.
It is proportional to the harm. And it is a massive multiplier over the amount earned by the scheme. If JJ only did Talc, they would be dead many hundreds of times over. But Talc is a tiny sliver of what they do. So they happen to be large enough to survive a massive blow from their talc operations.
Think about what you’re saying. It does not make any sense. You seem to be upset mostly that JJ still exists. Which is only true because they are large and diverse in many products that are completely unrelated to the line of business that caused the problem.
> A crime syndicate does not have to pay 2000 times the amount they would have gained by smuggling drugs, no their mules go to jail, their CEO is hunted down by the military, and their whole organization is disbanded. Nobody cares about the workers in this instance (I wonder why).
Because those workers are criminals, not office workers and factory workers, the vast majority of whom are ordinary Americans doing normal, productive, legal jobs that are unrelated to the fact that talc had asbestos.
As pointed out by a sibling comment, income is revenue, not profit. So it's as if a person who makes $100K got to write off the $85K they spent on rent and other expenses, and was fined half of the $15K they had left.
On the one hand yes, but it's hard to do a direct comparison between companies and people. J&J is 100k+ people combined.
Punitive damages for companies do feel out of wack though.
If a person commits a felony like that, they're thrown in prison, prevented from making any income for years, and then (in the US at least) prevented from making any good income for the rest of their lives due to our draconian restrictions on ex felons.
If a company does similar, then... the company itself is often just fine, especially if they're a big/rich enough company.
Yearly income of 200k, so netting 140k after taxes/SS, which makes the fine equivalent to 70k?
Paid over 25 years, so $2800/year?
Factoring depreciation due to inflation @2%/year, you're at $55.5k total and an effective average annual payment of $2200/year or $183/month. On a salary of 200k.
Yeah, I'm going to say that's not a big deal. That's less than the cheapest health insurance in the country.
J&J almost certainly don't have an insurance tower that goes anywhere near that. This a huge settlement. The biggest tower I know of is only $2b, but I don't know the whole market.
An insurance tower is the total insurance package assembled by a policy holder between primary and excess insurance policies, as once explained to me by my broker. I gather that it is a different animal than re-insurance between insurance companies, as that is not policy-specific.
Not really accurate. The problem was the contamination, not the Talc.
They have changed the process to remove the asbestos contamination, but have gone a step further in the US, out of risk-aversion, to replace the Talc with cornstarch entirely.
The courts aren’t there to punish giant multinational corporations, they’re there to protect their interests. Google “chevron donziger” if you have any doubt about that.
In most cases the corporations or their lobby groups are writing the laws that regulate them. They literally write the bills and hand them to congress to pass.
This might sound stupid, but we need a "blockchain for bills" that keeps track of every single human who made edits and authored each and every law - and if it sucks, hold the actual human beings accountable for stupid laws.
At least give them a public shaming, if we cant find them criminally responsible.
This does nothing to punish the corporate malfeasance of acting as an expert for the government, knowing better, and then lying by recommending less effective testing to preserve and maximize your own profits over the safety of every citizen using your products for decades.
Is there a criminal case in addition to the civil one? With the C-suites being prosecuted in person for hiding the truth they new and leading to the death of people, or is that wishful thinking?
The actual evidence of asbestos in the products is from decades ago, and the current executives were not involved. There likely isn't enough evidence of contamination in the product since the 1990s to hold anyone criminally liable. Evidentiary standards in civil cases are FAR lower.
It's good that all the bad people at J&J were working in the talc division, while the selfless honest people who never cheat or lie worked on the COVID vaccine.
