7 ms·

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, n

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?
      - darklajid 10y ago
        You make an interesting point. I will (no snark, I'm serious) try to figure out how this works in my home country and in Europe in general. Because .. I assume they have a strategy for this as well and 'pay a private party a lot of money' isn't something that's possible in Germany. But .. I'm too ignorant to know WHAT the strategy is over here, how companies would be/are being reigned in. Homework.
      - vubuntu 10y ago
        Punish/hurt the company with punitive damages, big enough to discourage negligent behavior - 100% on this Compensate the victims with amount equivalent to their loss(physical) + some decent compensation for emotional losses etc. But that need not be 30X of their actual loss. May be 2x or 3x. The rest of the punitive damages should be awarded to the regulatory body that can improve their oversight, or to a public research body that works on fire safety alarms/products etc for example, or to a public cause/charity that helps fire hazard victims or to a publicly funded affordable fire hazard insurance body etc. I see no need to award all the punitive damages to a single victim. This only encourages the 'sue first and for anything' behavior of the society.
  - mcphage 10y ago
    > 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. It's actually similar to the manufacturer's side here. As the poster above said, if the manufacturer doesn't have to pay more then the cost of the product, then there's no incentive for them to worry about safety, since they'll at most lose the cost of a product. Similarly, if all a retailer has to worry about is losing the cost of a product line, then there isn't any incentive for them to care if the products they sell are safe: if one isn't, they just stop selling that line, and there's no reason for them to vet them ahead of time. But if they can lose more than a single product line 's worth of product, then they have to care that they're not selling dangerous junk.

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?
    - darklajid 10y ago
      You make an interesting point. I will (no snark, I'm serious) try to figure out how this works in my home country and in Europe in general. Because .. I assume they have a strategy for this as well and 'pay a private party a lot of money' isn't something that's possible in Germany. But .. I'm too ignorant to know WHAT the strategy is over here, how companies would be/are being reigned in. Homework.
    - vubuntu 10y ago
      Punish/hurt the company with punitive damages, big enough to discourage negligent behavior - 100% on this Compensate the victims with amount equivalent to their loss(physical) + some decent compensation for emotional losses etc. But that need not be 30X of their actual loss. May be 2x or 3x. The rest of the punitive damages should be awarded to the regulatory body that can improve their oversight, or to a public research body that works on fire safety alarms/products etc for example, or to a public cause/charity that helps fire hazard victims or to a publicly funded affordable fire hazard insurance body etc. I see no need to award all the punitive damages to a single victim. This only encourages the 'sue first and for anything' behavior of the society.
- mcphage 10y ago
  > 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. It's actually similar to the manufacturer's side here. As the poster above said, if the manufacturer doesn't have to pay more then the cost of the product, then there's no incentive for them to worry about safety, since they'll at most lose the cost of a product. Similarly, if all a retailer has to worry about is losing the cost of a product line, then there isn't any incentive for them to care if the products they sell are safe: if one isn't, they just stop selling that line, and there's no reason for them to vet them ahead of time. But if they can lose more than a single product line 's worth of product, then they have to care that they're not selling dangerous junk.