4 ms·

The police report, however, did. Throwing ones hands up to say "well, of -course- the company is going to avoid paying anything out unless taken to a court of l

The police report, however, did. Throwing ones hands up to say "well, of -course- the company is going to avoid paying anything out unless taken to a court of law" is to abdicate corporations of all responsibility other than profit making. Just because a person can't afford justice doesn't mean we should accept injustice.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> The police report, however, did. Police reports are evidence that can support a finding of liability, but they are not a legal establishment of liability. There are very good reasons (the due process clause of the 14th Amendment comes to mind) why that should be the case, it's not a scam.. > Throwing ones hands up to say "well, of -course- the company is going to avoid paying anything out unless taken to a court of law" is to abdicate corporations of all responsibility other than profit making. Untrue. The corporation here has other responsibilities, but they are all to their paying customer.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  So you don’t think corporations have any responsibility to act ethically?
  - nwiswell 5y ago
    > responsibility to act ethically They have the opposite responsibility, if anything... They have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders, and considering that the behavior being suggested here would see them quickly run out of business by their less-moral competition, it would probably be a breach of that duty. The solution is to change laws about redress. For example, statutory punitive damages and attorneys' fees in lawsuits against insurers where the final judgement is significantly different from the insurer's initial offer. Talk about what is ethical is idle because that simply does not drive corporate behavior.
    - specialist 5y ago
      > They have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders... Citation please.
      - nwiswell 5y ago
        Does this work? https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/fiduciary-responsibility-corporations.html#:~:text=Fiduciary%20Duty%20of%20Loyalty,personal%20or%20other%20business%20interests https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/fiduciary-responsibi....
        Bootvis 5y ago
        No, that paragraph describes the duty of officers of the company to put the interests of the company before their own. It doesn’t claim that these officers need to behave unethically. You could even argue that displaying unethical behavior is not in the best interests of the company in the long run but this is of course hard to prove in any direction.
        nwiswell 5y ago
        You asked for a citation of fiduciary duty. I already explained why that precludes moral action in this case
        specialist 5y ago
        I now realize I misinterpretted your prior reply as copypasta of the "maximize shareholder value" trope. My apologies.
    - gruez 5y ago
      >The solution is to change laws about redress. For example, statutory punitive damages and attorneys' fees in lawsuits against insurers where the final judgement is significantly different from the insurer's initial offer. 1. I you're supposed to have negotiated with the counterparty in good faith prior to a lawsuit. If not, that will be looked negatively by the judge. https://www.sbwllp.com/rule-68-offers-of-judgment/ https://www.sbwllp.com/rule-68-offers-of-judgment/ 2. This probably doesn't play well with probabilities/statistics. Suppose we accept your proposal, and say any final judgement that's 5x larger than the offered settlement should be hit with extra damages. Now a lawsuit comes along that the insurance company thinks there's a 12.5% chance of winning, and if they win, the damages awarded will realistically be $1M. Based on expected value calculated from the previous facts, and factoring in court/attorney's fees, the insurance company offers the plaintiffs $150k to settle. That seems like a good offer for all parties involved. However, if the plaintiff gets greedy, and on the off chance he wins, the insurance company will have to pay extra damages, because from an initial offer to final judgement perspective the disparity is huge.
  - lmm 5y ago
    Corporations are no more ethical than wild animals. "Responsibility" doesn't enter into it, the fact is they don't understand human morality and can't be made to, so you have to handle them with that in mind.
  - lazide 5y ago
    Good luck proving it was unethical as compared to a ‘misunderstanding’. A lot of people are pretty good at CYA. Being on the shitty end of the stick, of course the poster sees what is happening. But until a judge or impartial third party with some pull sees it, it might as well not exist. And that’s hard.
joe_the_user 5y ago
The idiot of your whole thread is that while you're talking about how "insurance is a scam". Well, you might not like taking the complicated process needed to get stuff from an insurance company, sure. But if you were instead just dealing with an individual, it's obvious your situation would be not better but completely impossible.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> The police report, however, did. Police reports are evidence that can support a finding of liability, but they are not a legal establishment of liability. There are very good reasons (the due process clause of the 14th Amendment comes to mind) why that should be the case, it's not a scam.. > Throwing ones hands up to say "well, of -course- the company is going to avoid paying anything out unless taken to a court of law" is to abdicate corporations of all responsibility other than profit making. Untrue. The corporation here has other responsibilities, but they are all to their paying customer.

nicoburns 5y ago
So you don’t think corporations have any responsibility to act ethically?
- nwiswell 5y ago
  > responsibility to act ethically They have the opposite responsibility, if anything... They have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders, and considering that the behavior being suggested here would see them quickly run out of business by their less-moral competition, it would probably be a breach of that duty. The solution is to change laws about redress. For example, statutory punitive damages and attorneys' fees in lawsuits against insurers where the final judgement is significantly different from the insurer's initial offer. Talk about what is ethical is idle because that simply does not drive corporate behavior.
  - specialist 5y ago
    > They have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders... Citation please.
    - nwiswell 5y ago
      Does this work? https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/fiduciary-responsibility-corporations.html#:~:text=Fiduciary%20Duty%20of%20Loyalty,personal%20or%20other%20business%20interests https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/fiduciary-responsibi....
      - Bootvis 5y ago
        No, that paragraph describes the duty of officers of the company to put the interests of the company before their own. It doesn’t claim that these officers need to behave unethically. You could even argue that displaying unethical behavior is not in the best interests of the company in the long run but this is of course hard to prove in any direction.
        nwiswell 5y ago
        You asked for a citation of fiduciary duty. I already explained why that precludes moral action in this case
      - specialist 5y ago
        I now realize I misinterpretted your prior reply as copypasta of the "maximize shareholder value" trope. My apologies.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >The solution is to change laws about redress. For example, statutory punitive damages and attorneys' fees in lawsuits against insurers where the final judgement is significantly different from the insurer's initial offer. 1. I you're supposed to have negotiated with the counterparty in good faith prior to a lawsuit. If not, that will be looked negatively by the judge. https://www.sbwllp.com/rule-68-offers-of-judgment/ https://www.sbwllp.com/rule-68-offers-of-judgment/ 2. This probably doesn't play well with probabilities/statistics. Suppose we accept your proposal, and say any final judgement that's 5x larger than the offered settlement should be hit with extra damages. Now a lawsuit comes along that the insurance company thinks there's a 12.5% chance of winning, and if they win, the damages awarded will realistically be $1M. Based on expected value calculated from the previous facts, and factoring in court/attorney's fees, the insurance company offers the plaintiffs $150k to settle. That seems like a good offer for all parties involved. However, if the plaintiff gets greedy, and on the off chance he wins, the insurance company will have to pay extra damages, because from an initial offer to final judgement perspective the disparity is huge.
- lmm 5y ago
  Corporations are no more ethical than wild animals. "Responsibility" doesn't enter into it, the fact is they don't understand human morality and can't be made to, so you have to handle them with that in mind.
- lazide 5y ago
  Good luck proving it was unethical as compared to a ‘misunderstanding’. A lot of people are pretty good at CYA. Being on the shitty end of the stick, of course the poster sees what is happening. But until a judge or impartial third party with some pull sees it, it might as well not exist. And that’s hard.

joe_the_user 5y ago

The idiot of your whole thread is that while you're talking about how "insurance is a scam". Well, you might not like taking the complicated process needed to get stuff from an insurance company, sure. But if you were instead just dealing with an individual, it's obvious your situation would be not better but completely impossible.