11 ms·

this is the thing that bothers me the most. if a person fucks up, massive consequences. A company? I'm pretty sure the CEO and board got plenty of cash, and lo

this is the thing that bothers me the most. if a person fucks up, massive consequences. A company? I'm pretty sure the CEO and board got plenty of cash, and lots of protections against all their wrongdoings

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
If they make a pattern of it they're likely to get smacked with punitive damages or a similarly large class action, see McDonalds coffee for a good example. If you write off the punitive damages as a cost of doing business the judgements are going to go up exponentially from there (assuming the next claimant's lawyer is smart enough to find and read the last judgement).
edoceo 5y ago
And a nice salary along the way. And many times the company will provide additional insurance/benefits just in case.
kube-system 5y ago
That's not necessarily true. The vast majority of individual people that file chapter 7 don't give up a penny. US bankruptcy law is surprisingly progressive for the little guy -- even compared to other progressive countries.
- netizen-936824 5y ago
  You but we aren't discussing bankruptcy. If you call the police and give them false information to get someone else arrested. I'll bet that when they find out, you'll be the one getting arrested. These CEOs and board members don't even get fined personally, the company usually pays
  - kube-system 5y ago
    There is no claim that a CEO or board member made any false statements to police in this story. Furthermore, no matter who at Hertz called it in, the crime of "making false statements" generally requires that the statements be knowingly and willfully wrong. If Hertz reports a car stolen because front desk staff made a mistake, that's simply not criminal. This also applies to you as an individual too. If you report your car stolen when you forgot where you parked it, that is also not criminal. Hertz is being treated the same as you would be. I don't see anything in this story that describes a crime. (except for the people who may have actually stolen cars) These are descriptions of civil wrongdoings.
    - jfrunyon 5y ago
      You're completely ignoring the point of the comment that you're responding to. Someone at Hertz is culpable for not taking steps to prevent this from happening.
      - kube-system 5y ago
        I don't understand what you think I am ignoring. > Someone at Hertz is culpable for not taking steps to prevent this from happening. Of course, this is what the 191 lawsuits are about. They are to determine Hertz's culpability in -- with what the article describes -- are the civil wrongdoings I mentioned in my above comment.
      - mantaraygun 5y ago
        > Someone at Hertz is culpable for not taking steps to prevent this from happening. It's far from clear that anybody at Hertz is criminally culpable, which is what was suggested upthread, with talk of people making false statements being arrested.
        jfrunyon 5y ago
        Which is indisputably a problem with our society.
        kube-system 5y ago
        I think, that to suggest that people should be held criminally responsible for the mistakes of others (assuming that these are mistakes), is a pretty extreme position. Over-criminalization of everything a much more problematic situation that had led to larger problems with mass incarceration that underlies many of the most significant problems that the US has. The solution to everything isn't "lock 'em up and throw away the key". We have functional civil courts, and they are more than capable of remediating wrongs.
        jfrunyon 5y ago
- kaminar 5y ago
  Bankruptcy ain't free fella. Pony up a few $1000, or no bk atty will touch your case.
jrockway 5y ago
I think if you make one individual accountable for every mistake a company makes, then you change the nature of business. In this case, you want the CEO and board to go to prison because some low-level employee made a mistake on some paperwork. That could be avoided; simply don't report car thefts to the police. Charge people $20,000 up front to rent a $20,000 car, and say "if you return it and we feel like it, we'll give you $19,000" back. If the car gets stolen, not their problem anymore. If they mis-file some paperwork and don't give you $19,000 when you return it, well the contract you signed said "if we feel like it" and they didn't feel like it, so I guess keep the car if you want to. But, this business model would never work, so there simply wouldn't be car rental companies anymore. There has to be some abstraction layer between a company and its officers, or companies can't take the risk of delegating anything to employees. The reality of society is that sometimes something is going to get fucked up, and the dispute resolution process is expensive and messy. That's the legal system, and it exists for a reason. Ideally, most people don't have to use it very often, and the 0.001% of the time when something fails catastrophically, the pain of that one individual that it didn't work for makes society less painful for everyone else longer term. This person lost their real estate license, so that thousands of other people can drive someone else's car while they're on vacation without having to buy the car with cash outright. Net win? Probably. To some extent, you can always reduce the risk of anything to as low as you want. It's just that at some point, the cost of that makes the entire endeavor not worthwhile financially. Risk aversion is a tax on innovation, so you don't want to become too risk averse. I think society has found a decent balance here.
- aaomidi 5y ago
  > then you change the nature of business. Okay? Let's change the nature of business then. > I think society has found a decent balance here. People spending over a month in jail is the right balance here? What's to say this isn't something that's going to keep happening? What's the incentive for a company to actually do the right thing? Honestly fines for companies should be far, far higher. At the amounts of single to double digits percentage of the company's revenue.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  I get where you are coming from, but I had a job a few years ago where this type of incident would be pretty devastating. Some people’s employers would be aware of a pending arrest warrant within hours, likely before they are. People get immediately suspended without pay and need to hire an attorney, etc to figure out wtf is going on. Depending on what happened, it could take months to restore everything. I manage risk for a living. If a consumer needs to be worried about felony arrest when renting a fricking car, something is very wrong. I would assert that if the company’s incompetence in implementing, administrating, and signing off on controls is such that customers are being arrested because they can’t figure out wth their rental cars are, the executives should have Sarbanes-Oxley exposure and potential criminal liability.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

If they make a pattern of it they're likely to get smacked with punitive damages or a similarly large class action, see McDonalds coffee for a good example. If you write off the punitive damages as a cost of doing business the judgements are going to go up exponentially from there (assuming the next claimant's lawyer is smart enough to find and read the last judgement).

edoceo 5y ago

And a nice salary along the way. And many times the company will provide additional insurance/benefits just in case.

kube-system 5y ago

That's not necessarily true. The vast majority of individual people that file chapter 7 don't give up a penny. US bankruptcy law is surprisingly progressive for the little guy -- even compared to other progressive countries.

netizen-936824 5y ago
You but we aren't discussing bankruptcy. If you call the police and give them false information to get someone else arrested. I'll bet that when they find out, you'll be the one getting arrested. These CEOs and board members don't even get fined personally, the company usually pays
- kube-system 5y ago
  There is no claim that a CEO or board member made any false statements to police in this story. Furthermore, no matter who at Hertz called it in, the crime of "making false statements" generally requires that the statements be knowingly and willfully wrong. If Hertz reports a car stolen because front desk staff made a mistake, that's simply not criminal. This also applies to you as an individual too. If you report your car stolen when you forgot where you parked it, that is also not criminal. Hertz is being treated the same as you would be. I don't see anything in this story that describes a crime. (except for the people who may have actually stolen cars) These are descriptions of civil wrongdoings.
  - jfrunyon 5y ago
    You're completely ignoring the point of the comment that you're responding to. Someone at Hertz is culpable for not taking steps to prevent this from happening.
    - kube-system 5y ago
      I don't understand what you think I am ignoring. > Someone at Hertz is culpable for not taking steps to prevent this from happening. Of course, this is what the 191 lawsuits are about. They are to determine Hertz's culpability in -- with what the article describes -- are the civil wrongdoings I mentioned in my above comment.
    - mantaraygun 5y ago
      > Someone at Hertz is culpable for not taking steps to prevent this from happening. It's far from clear that anybody at Hertz is criminally culpable, which is what was suggested upthread, with talk of people making false statements being arrested.
      - jfrunyon 5y ago
        Which is indisputably a problem with our society.
        kube-system 5y ago
        I think, that to suggest that people should be held criminally responsible for the mistakes of others (assuming that these are mistakes), is a pretty extreme position. Over-criminalization of everything a much more problematic situation that had led to larger problems with mass incarceration that underlies many of the most significant problems that the US has. The solution to everything isn't "lock 'em up and throw away the key". We have functional civil courts, and they are more than capable of remediating wrongs.
        jfrunyon 5y ago
kaminar 5y ago
Bankruptcy ain't free fella. Pony up a few $1000, or no bk atty will touch your case.

jrockway 5y ago

I think if you make one individual accountable for every mistake a company makes, then you change the nature of business. In this case, you want the CEO and board to go to prison because some low-level employee made a mistake on some paperwork. That could be avoided; simply don't report car thefts to the police. Charge people $20,000 up front to rent a $20,000 car, and say "if you return it and we feel like it, we'll give you $19,000" back. If the car gets stolen, not their problem anymore. If they mis-file some paperwork and don't give you $19,000 when you return it, well the contract you signed said "if we feel like it" and they didn't feel like it, so I guess keep the car if you want to. But, this business model would never work, so there simply wouldn't be car rental companies anymore. There has to be some abstraction layer between a company and its officers, or companies can't take the risk of delegating anything to employees. The reality of society is that sometimes something is going to get fucked up, and the dispute resolution process is expensive and messy. That's the legal system, and it exists for a reason. Ideally, most people don't have to use it very often, and the 0.001% of the time when something fails catastrophically, the pain of that one individual that it didn't work for makes society less painful for everyone else longer term. This person lost their real estate license, so that thousands of other people can drive someone else's car while they're on vacation without having to buy the car with cash outright. Net win? Probably. To some extent, you can always reduce the risk of anything to as low as you want. It's just that at some point, the cost of that makes the entire endeavor not worthwhile financially. Risk aversion is a tax on innovation, so you don't want to become too risk averse. I think society has found a decent balance here.

aaomidi 5y ago
> then you change the nature of business. Okay? Let's change the nature of business then. > I think society has found a decent balance here. People spending over a month in jail is the right balance here? What's to say this isn't something that's going to keep happening? What's the incentive for a company to actually do the right thing? Honestly fines for companies should be far, far higher. At the amounts of single to double digits percentage of the company's revenue.
Spooky23 5y ago
I get where you are coming from, but I had a job a few years ago where this type of incident would be pretty devastating. Some people’s employers would be aware of a pending arrest warrant within hours, likely before they are. People get immediately suspended without pay and need to hire an attorney, etc to figure out wtf is going on. Depending on what happened, it could take months to restore everything. I manage risk for a living. If a consumer needs to be worried about felony arrest when renting a fricking car, something is very wrong. I would assert that if the company’s incompetence in implementing, administrating, and signing off on controls is such that customers are being arrested because they can’t figure out wth their rental cars are, the executives should have Sarbanes-Oxley exposure and potential criminal liability.