10 Billion Dollars

Nearly every night I see a commercial for the Roundup class action lawsuit. Bayer bought Monsanto (for $63 billion), and agreed to pay $10 billion to settle the cancer lawsuits. I can't stop thinking about that $10 billion, and what it means. To me it means a company like that can do anything. How can you punish a company that can settle lawsuits like that?

This is from last year https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/business/roundup-settlement-lawsuits.html

Now Bayer is moving to put those troubles behind it, agreeing to pay more than $10 billion to settle tens of thousands of claims while continuing to sell the product without adding warning labels about its safety.

I suppose the warning label would be seen as an admission that glyphosate may cause cancer, but somehow a $10 billion settlement doesn't. It worries me that some of these corporations are so big that they can do this.

 

It's disgusting. Make enough money, even if obtained criminally or through misconduct and you can buy your way out of anything. Vioxx caused estimates of hundreds of thousands of people to die and not one person got charged

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/business/merck-agrees-to-pay-950-million-in-vioxx-case.html

Merck has agreed to pay $950 million and has pleaded guilty to a criminal charge over the marketing and sales of the painkiller Vioxx, the company and the Justice Department said Tuesday.

The negotiated settlement, which includes resolution of civil cases, was the latest of a series of fraud cases brought by federal and state prosecutors against major pharmaceutical companies.

Also

In 2007, Merck agreed to pay $4.85 billion to settle 27,000 lawsuits by people who had claimed they or their relatives had suffered injury or death after taking the drug. Merck has also signed a corporate integrity agreement in connection with the settlement, promising to monitor future promotional activity and report back regularly to the government. Merck joins Pfizer and most other major drug companies in settling long investigations with prosecutors.

No person was held liable for Merck’s conduct. “It’s just a cost of doing business until a pharmaceutical executive does a perp walk,” said Erik Gordon, a pharmaceutical analyst and clinical assistant professor at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.

As for Monsanto, they are a purely soulless organisation but no trouble will ever get to them. They pull to many strings and a lot of them end up financing presidential campaigns or get invited to have a seat at the table in politics.

Fines and lawsuits are just a part of doing business.  Unless the cost of the fine or lawsuit outweighs the economic benefits coming in to the company, it will always make business sense to do the shady and count the punishment as just a cost.  Maybe if the people in charge could face their own repercussions, like jail time or personal fines, we might see a little bit of change.  In order for that, you'd have to prove who knew about the problem and made the decision to ignore it, which might prove difficult.

We could also start to hit companies who deliberately cause harm to people for the sake of profit with more substantial punishments, say like paying a 20% of the company's revenue annually for a certain number of years.  The punishment has to make the business executives really consider whether the risk is truly worth the reward.

Yet glyphosphate sales are predicted to 13 billion/year by 2027.

As for Monsanto, they are a purely soulless organisation

As opposed to all the soulful corporations?

Yet glyphosphate sales are predicted to 13 billion/year by 2027.

I wonder if 'roundup ready' crops are still a thing. Where you can just liberally apply that 'potential' carcinogen all over the crops people will eat without killing the crop

Nice the crop has been genetically engineered to not be killed by it but what about me?

Quote from: Shifter on May 27, 2021, 07:47:47 PM

As for Monsanto, they are a purely soulless organisation

As opposed to all the soulful corporations?

Yeah. Like PETA

Australia has a mouse plague problem and the nice folks at PETA had the super nice suggestion to not kill the mice but to catch and let them go. Such nice people!

I put a glue trap in my roof. Looked the other day and found one stuck nice and good. Still alive. I poked it to scare the hell out of it and left it there to think about his mistake. If he can free himself he is worthy to live. If not, we'll not my problem

But seriously, corporations mostly rank from bastardry to pure evil. Monsanto ranks upon the most pure of evil. It not only sets out to make obscene amounts of money. It does so knowingly making the world a worse place with much suffering. I can see why Bill Gates liked them enough to gift millions of dollars to them

Nearly every night I see a commercial for the Roundup class action lawsuit. Bayer bought Monsanto (for $63 billion), and agreed to pay $10 billion to settle the cancer lawsuits. I can't stop thinking about that $10 billion, and what it means. To me it means a company like that can do anything. How can you punish a company that can settle lawsuits like that?

You're right, you can't punish a company. Which is why we should punish the people that made those decisions, which sadly only rarely happens.

Bayer has to pay out billions but the Monsanto executives who caused the problem have all their money and don't care, which is why they did it in the first place. They knew they would get their money and never pay for their crimes.

Quote from: Shifter on May 27, 2021, 07:47:47 PM

As for Monsanto, they are a purely soulless organisation

As opposed to all the soulful corporations?

Corporations are people too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

Power corrupts?