These are the kind of financial hits these companies should be taking. Which means, as usual, this'll get knocked down due a few hundred million tops in appeals.
this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2024
409 points (99.0% liked)
News
23296 readers
3577 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
well this is appeal 4 I think and its been swinging back and forth between Bayer owes shit and Bayer owes billions. Let's not count any dollars until this guy starts collecting.
Full transparency, Bayer is my employer, these thoughts and opinions are my own and do not reflect my employer, My bonus would look a lot better without this news, but the dude totally deserves to win because boy did Monsanto fuck him over.
After dealing with Monsanto trolls who admitted to taking a paycheck from them as they disseminated pro-Monsanto rhetoric, this pleases me to no end.
Shit. My dad worked for Monsanto for decades on their environmental legal team (even worked with Clarence Thomas for a bit)
I'll talk no end of shit on them
admitted
That’s wild.
It’s more likely they were weak and unfaithful to their unethical contract, vs. paid by a foreign state actor to stir division, right?
Imagine admitting you’re such a joke! (Or poor + reckless (could get caught), etc.)
They basically argued that because they work work with the products directly, that made their position on the issue superior, hence why they admitted it.
They also said it wasn't a conflict of interest, lmao.
Ah makes total sense!
Don't worry about Roundup causing cancer, ~~a washed up former greenpeace hack turned shill suckling at the teat of companies responsible for the declining state of the world~~ Patrick Moore assured me that it is non dangerous. It is even perfectly safe to drink a quart of it!
Christ…
I have drank a quart of Perfectly Safe Roundup Product daily, as was instructed as being safe by an Independent Advocate, Patrick Moore
Plants now quake in my presence, and the giant growths on my body and in my blood are probably just muscle tissue
I don't see how $2 billion to one person is what they need to be doing, but sure.
The jury has some say in what they have to pay. Sometimes they go higher than you would expect so that when it's cut down by a judge they still get something.
It would be better to have something like a class action where they have to pay out $40 million each to hundreds of people rather than 10 people get ridiculous sums that are way more than they need and everyone else get nothing because the company went bankrupt after the first 10 settlements.
It was probably easier to prove this single one rather than finding enough people for a class action.
Yeah, but it still shouldn't go to a single person. Better pay it as a fine to the state or distribute it to charities. Or, better yet pit the money into creating a foundation to help cancer victims.
Somewhere above the 10-100m$ range it loses any sort of compensatory purpose, both you and your eternal decendants could live off of just interest at that point and buy essentially anything.
No one ever actually gets paid out the full sum like this. I don't disagree that there are things that could and maybe should be done with this kind of cash but in cases like this its not always easy to prove a causal link between whatever chemicals and whatever illness. Regardless of what is done with the money this still sets a precedent and others will have an easier time suing for damages.
Can the jury say anything they want or are there any limitations?
I am not a lawyer but from what I understand there are 2 levels of penalty, 1 that has some kind of basis like medical costs and then jury can add punitive on top.
Fuck them, that's why. Maybe they'll do the right thing before The Cock of Justice slaps then in the face 10 times, next time.
The people actually responsible are laughing on their way to the bank right now.
And that's why billion+ judgements should be the norm. And no, I don't care about the precious shareholders.
Agreed. I'm just wondering how this even works in practice. Bayer's total assets are $125bn; If they poisoned ~1000 people, do they sell off all assets to pay the first 62 people and from the 63rd guy on they're all shit out of luck?
Or is this like those rulings where they give a murderer 6 times life in prison + 327 years (and 3 death sentences)? America has a weird judicial system.
Pretty much that is how it works, yes. Most likely they'd try to pull a J&J and restructure where the debt is given to a subsidiary that then declares bankruptcy. Thankfully that strategy was rejected but they're still plotting to declare bankruptcy somehow.
I was very surprised this wasn't a class action. Since what bayer did was so horrible that one person deserves 2 billion then they should be dissolved with all their money distributed to all their customers.
create walter white any%
I hate that shit. Who thinks it's safe for the world to use a chemical herbicide? It's just such a stupid idea.
Not that more evidence is required, but I when I was a kid were had this dog who would just have random -- what seemed like -- asthma attacks, while out on walks. They would go away if I picked him up, and we would continue on. Eventually, I noticed it only happened in certain spots, and that those spots all used some herbicide (because they would have the ads on the lawns).
Anyway that cemented a deep disgust for that tech from a young age. Absolutely disgusting. All so you can try to get your lawn to resemble the most boring PS1-ass green polygon imaginable.