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Why even declare such an outlandish number? What’s the difference between saying 2.2T or a gajillion bazillion?

by ferros 6y ago

olliej 6y ago
I assume to set the stage for negotiation - presumably significant costs for dealing with the destruction Purdue caused, and also wanting ongoing recovery support from them.
smnrchrds 6y ago
Maybe it's like 1000-year prison terms. It does not make practical sense, but if that is how much harm the company has caused, that is how much the lawsuit would be for.
- ferros 6y ago
  Understand, it just adds a sense of unrealism to that case for me. Everything else looks solid, then after seeing that number, it changes how I see the whole thing.
  - jliptzin 6y ago
    Maybe they did an unreal amount of harm. That could just be where the math adds up. If they're responsible for 100,000 overdose deaths, with each life valued at an average of $20 million, that adds up to ~$2T.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      Especially when you consider those that didn't overdose but were still crippled, which is certainly at least an integer multiple of the number of deaths.
  - onetimemanytime 6y ago
    That is you problem then. They did cause that much damage to the US economy via addictions, deaths, hospital charges, lost taxes, state raising kids cause mommy and daddy are addicts etc etc.. The other side can and will challenge the damages via experts. Obviously they will not see $2 Trillion, but you ask for at least to be made whole.
frgtpsswrdlame 6y ago
What makes you think it's outlandish? It's certainly possible that it's a approximate monetary evaluation of the harm caused.
- ferros 6y ago
  I would have thought it would look something like this; We estimate it has caused 2,2T in damage and are seeking 100B. They are obviously very smart people and haven’t done it like this for a reason.
  - Judgmentality 6y ago
    Why would you not seek the total cost of damages?
  - happytoexplain 6y ago
    Why would the amount sought be less than the damages? Just because they can't practically recuperate it doesn't mean they shouldn't state that it is what they are owed.
- loeg 6y ago
  It's more than 10% 2018 US entire GDP.
  - happytoexplain 6y ago
    In what way is that evidence that the harm caused can not sum to the number given? You could also figure out how tall it would be as a stack of ones, but it's supremely irrelevant.
    - lb1lf 6y ago
      -Just a tad shy of 150,000 miles tall, since you ask. (A dollar bill is .0043in thick, so unless imperial unit-challenged me messed up doing the conversions, it should be almost 2/3 of the way from Earth to The Moon.) This would be awfully inconvenient, though - if you use $100 bills instead, you'd have a still very inconvenient, but more manageable stack of 1,500 miles. More manageable still would be to just put the ones in a warehouse - they'd require 88M cubic feet of space, or a cube with sides of 445ft. It should fit nicely inside the Saturn V Vehicle Assembly Building.
jcrawfordor 6y ago
$2.2T, or it seems actually $2.15T, is the sum damage to the state economies as estimated by economists. Yes, the strategy here is effectively just to throw out a huge number to argue that the damage done would be impossible to truly correct. But as a general principle you can't go to court and just ask for whatever number you feel like, you need to justify to the court exactly why you are owed that much. So they ran the numbers and $2.15T is what they thought they could justify.
iav 6y ago
There are many other claimants in the Purdue bankruptcy other than the Multistate Group mentioned here. Each of those claimants is incentivized to make their claim as large as possible to reduce the amount left over for the hospitals, Native American tribes, individual victims, and the many other groups fighting to maximize their slice of the Purdue pie. Full list of unsecured claimants is in this document: http://bankrupt11.com/dockets/documents/p_purduepharma414/ http://bankrupt11.com/dockets/documents/p_purduepharma414/

Why even declare such an outlandish number? What’s the difference between saying 2.2T or a gajillion bazillion?

by ferros 6y ago

Why even declare such an outlandish number? What’s the difference between saying 2.2T or a gajillion bazillion?

I assume to set the stage for negotiation - presumably significant costs for dealing with the destruction Purdue caused, and also wanting ongoing recovery support from them.

smnrchrds 6y ago

Maybe it's like 1000-year prison terms. It does not make practical sense, but if that is how much harm the company has caused, that is how much the lawsuit would be for.

ferros 6y ago
Understand, it just adds a sense of unrealism to that case for me. Everything else looks solid, then after seeing that number, it changes how I see the whole thing.
- jliptzin 6y ago
  Maybe they did an unreal amount of harm. That could just be where the math adds up. If they're responsible for 100,000 overdose deaths, with each life valued at an average of $20 million, that adds up to ~$2T.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Especially when you consider those that didn't overdose but were still crippled, which is certainly at least an integer multiple of the number of deaths.
- onetimemanytime 6y ago
  That is you problem then. They did cause that much damage to the US economy via addictions, deaths, hospital charges, lost taxes, state raising kids cause mommy and daddy are addicts etc etc.. The other side can and will challenge the damages via experts. Obviously they will not see $2 Trillion, but you ask for at least to be made whole.

frgtpsswrdlame 6y ago

What makes you think it's outlandish? It's certainly possible that it's a approximate monetary evaluation of the harm caused.

ferros 6y ago
I would have thought it would look something like this; We estimate it has caused 2,2T in damage and are seeking 100B. They are obviously very smart people and haven’t done it like this for a reason.
- Judgmentality 6y ago
  Why would you not seek the total cost of damages?
- happytoexplain 6y ago
  Why would the amount sought be less than the damages? Just because they can't practically recuperate it doesn't mean they shouldn't state that it is what they are owed.
loeg 6y ago
It's more than 10% 2018 US entire GDP.
- happytoexplain 6y ago
  In what way is that evidence that the harm caused can not sum to the number given? You could also figure out how tall it would be as a stack of ones, but it's supremely irrelevant.
  - lb1lf 6y ago
    -Just a tad shy of 150,000 miles tall, since you ask. (A dollar bill is .0043in thick, so unless imperial unit-challenged me messed up doing the conversions, it should be almost 2/3 of the way from Earth to The Moon.) This would be awfully inconvenient, though - if you use $100 bills instead, you'd have a still very inconvenient, but more manageable stack of 1,500 miles. More manageable still would be to just put the ones in a warehouse - they'd require 88M cubic feet of space, or a cube with sides of 445ft. It should fit nicely inside the Saturn V Vehicle Assembly Building.

jcrawfordor 6y ago

$2.2T, or it seems actually $2.15T, is the sum damage to the state economies as estimated by economists. Yes, the strategy here is effectively just to throw out a huge number to argue that the damage done would be impossible to truly correct. But as a general principle you can't go to court and just ask for whatever number you feel like, you need to justify to the court exactly why you are owed that much. So they ran the numbers and $2.15T is what they thought they could justify.

iav 6y ago

There are many other claimants in the Purdue bankruptcy other than the Multistate Group mentioned here. Each of those claimants is incentivized to make their claim as large as possible to reduce the amount left over for the hospitals, Native American tribes, individual victims, and the many other groups fighting to maximize their slice of the Purdue pie. Full list of unsecured claimants is in this document: http://bankrupt11.com/dockets/documents/p_purduepharma414/ http://bankrupt11.com/dockets/documents/p_purduepharma414/