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I'd be glad to see Amazon (or anyone selling faulty products) pay for the damages. I don't understand how 'destroyed a 1mil house' turns into 30mil. This "pay

I'd be glad to see Amazon (or anyone selling faulty products) pay for the damages. I don't understand how 'destroyed a 1mil house' turns into 30mil. This "pay for the immaterial damage you've done" (assuming that the 1mil contains most of the furniture etc. and that the rest of their belongings don't come close to 29mil dollars) attitude is strange, hard to grasp here.

mancerayder 10y ago
If you don't fully grasp the American legal system it does seem silly. Basically, the idea is that this falls in the civil court system. I.e. you're wronged, so you sue for damages. However, one of the main reasons why you can sue for 30M and not for the price of the loss is the concept of punitive damages. If Amazon loses 30 and not 1M,they're less likely to allow the wrong to happen so easily again. In places like France, you can't sue for 30M, but you can maybe sue for what you lost. At the same time, the criminal laws are more likely to affect corporations via regulations and even legal action. Thus, the philosophy in the US is, less government regulation, more emphasis on non governmental interference in private entities working out their differences with the government only as impartial judge. Hence it's very important for individual consumers that we be able to sue for these ridiculous sums. It's the only disincentive for the Amazons and other powerhouse corporations from getting away with such things as a fire caused by negligence, and their writing it off as a business expense. The expense needs to be high.
- darklajid 10y ago
  Thanks a lot for the explanation. I think what I mostly don't get is a) isn't "replace 1mil+ for a product that costs 100" (pulled that number from thin air, no clue what these things cost) already punitive? The replacement cost eats the profit for a HUGE number of sales already, no? b) the arguments for the _specific_ number seem completely arbitrary and scaling in ways I cannot understand. It's not "our home was destroyed, pay to replace it and pay for another house on top, because we have to replace all the stuff inside and the experience was crazy". It's "our home was destroyed, pay us enough to buy 2 dozen of these homes with a lot of room to make every single one of these 24 homes look nice as well". That scales in ways that are utterly alien to me. If you can somehow defend your request for 30mil, why not 50? 100? As soon as you enter 'emotional damage' (hard to quantify) or punitive damages (the more the better, right?) I fail to see how you come up with these numbers. Then again, I'm not saying it's silly. It's just completely confusing for me and I DO feel better about the local system. It is an entirely different culture and I'm trying to point this out in a thread that so far is full of "Yeah, makes sense" posts. Internationally it might not be that one sided.
  - user5994461 10y ago
    a) The manufacturer must at least reimburse the damages he's done with his product. Otherwise anyone can manufacture explosive broken fire-trigerring devices. There's no point of making a device 'safe' if a $1 device can't pay back more than $1. The only incentive is to make stuff cheap, ignore safety, risks and regulation. If the manufacturer must close, so be it. Better that than dead people. b) The scale is American. They sue for very high amount (higher than just the reimbursement), as the previous poster was explaining.
    - darklajid 10y ago
      Your first point misses what I was saying (or I was bad at saying it). Of course you pay for the damages caused, not the product's price. In the case here I expect someone (Amazon? Whoever) pay for the 1 million plus to replace the house. I brought up the product price just because I feel that paying more than a million in damages for a product that costs (say..) 100 dollar is already punitive in terms of business. Whoever has to pay even 1 million probably will be quite unhappy about carrying that product, without any further inflation: The price for this accident eats the profit for a BIG number of sales - ignoring the PR issues. So: Sure, if you sell a $1 device that causes $1,000,000 in damages, pay a million (or more). But paying a million (or more) caused by a $1 device seems already like a decent way to make the business .. reconsider some practices?
      - user5994461 10y ago
        Yes. It hurts the business badly. That's why there aren't many manufacturers in business and they are all big. Even more so in the USA, because the law is retarded and people could sue for stupid reasons and win ^^ It seems that here the trick is to attack Amazon instead of the device manufacturer. The damages are scaled for Amazon size.
        sundaeofshock 10y ago
        The point of punitive damages is to hurt the company. Do you have other suggestions for how to punish companies that harm consumers?
anindha 10y ago
Its hard to imagine how traumatic almost dieing or almost having your kids die would be to the individual.

mancerayder 10y ago

If you don't fully grasp the American legal system it does seem silly. Basically, the idea is that this falls in the civil court system. I.e. you're wronged, so you sue for damages. However, one of the main reasons why you can sue for 30M and not for the price of the loss is the concept of punitive damages. If Amazon loses 30 and not 1M,they're less likely to allow the wrong to happen so easily again. In places like France, you can't sue for 30M, but you can maybe sue for what you lost. At the same time, the criminal laws are more likely to affect corporations via regulations and even legal action. Thus, the philosophy in the US is, less government regulation, more emphasis on non governmental interference in private entities working out their differences with the government only as impartial judge. Hence it's very important for individual consumers that we be able to sue for these ridiculous sums. It's the only disincentive for the Amazons and other powerhouse corporations from getting away with such things as a fire caused by negligence, and their writing it off as a business expense. The expense needs to be high.

darklajid 10y ago
Thanks a lot for the explanation. I think what I mostly don't get is a) isn't "replace 1mil+ for a product that costs 100" (pulled that number from thin air, no clue what these things cost) already punitive? The replacement cost eats the profit for a HUGE number of sales already, no? b) the arguments for the _specific_ number seem completely arbitrary and scaling in ways I cannot understand. It's not "our home was destroyed, pay to replace it and pay for another house on top, because we have to replace all the stuff inside and the experience was crazy". It's "our home was destroyed, pay us enough to buy 2 dozen of these homes with a lot of room to make every single one of these 24 homes look nice as well". That scales in ways that are utterly alien to me. If you can somehow defend your request for 30mil, why not 50? 100? As soon as you enter 'emotional damage' (hard to quantify) or punitive damages (the more the better, right?) I fail to see how you come up with these numbers. Then again, I'm not saying it's silly. It's just completely confusing for me and I DO feel better about the local system. It is an entirely different culture and I'm trying to point this out in a thread that so far is full of "Yeah, makes sense" posts. Internationally it might not be that one sided.
- user5994461 10y ago
  a) The manufacturer must at least reimburse the damages he's done with his product. Otherwise anyone can manufacture explosive broken fire-trigerring devices. There's no point of making a device 'safe' if a $1 device can't pay back more than $1. The only incentive is to make stuff cheap, ignore safety, risks and regulation. If the manufacturer must close, so be it. Better that than dead people. b) The scale is American. They sue for very high amount (higher than just the reimbursement), as the previous poster was explaining.
  - darklajid 10y ago
    Your first point misses what I was saying (or I was bad at saying it). Of course you pay for the damages caused, not the product's price. In the case here I expect someone (Amazon? Whoever) pay for the 1 million plus to replace the house. I brought up the product price just because I feel that paying more than a million in damages for a product that costs (say..) 100 dollar is already punitive in terms of business. Whoever has to pay even 1 million probably will be quite unhappy about carrying that product, without any further inflation: The price for this accident eats the profit for a BIG number of sales - ignoring the PR issues. So: Sure, if you sell a $1 device that causes $1,000,000 in damages, pay a million (or more). But paying a million (or more) caused by a $1 device seems already like a decent way to make the business .. reconsider some practices?
    - user5994461 10y ago
      Yes. It hurts the business badly. That's why there aren't many manufacturers in business and they are all big. Even more so in the USA, because the law is retarded and people could sue for stupid reasons and win ^^ It seems that here the trick is to attack Amazon instead of the device manufacturer. The damages are scaled for Amazon size.
      - sundaeofshock 10y ago
        The point of punitive damages is to hurt the company. Do you have other suggestions for how to punish companies that harm consumers?

anindha 10y ago

Its hard to imagine how traumatic almost dieing or almost having your kids die would be to the individual.