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3M heads to trial in ‘existential’ $143B forever-chemicals litigation
- js4ever 3y agohttps://archive.is/8mVcB https://archive.is/8mVcB
- omeysalvi 3y agoJohnson and Johnson tried to spin up a subsidiary and shift all the blame to it for including asbestos in talcum powder for decades. Thankfully, the courts saw through the move and made them pay billions of dollars too
- delfinom 3y agoJ&J ended up paying $9 billion but they still ended up being allowed to spin a subsidiary to hold that money and essentially take on the liability of future lawsuits or what happens when the money runs out and there are more claims.
- hackernewds 3y agoWhat if this subsidiary has $1B in assets? Do they go bankrupt and not have to pay the rest of the $8B?
- arpora 3y agoWould recommend the Matt Levine write-up: https://archive.is/44wfu https://archive.is/44wfu In the J&J case, the subsidiary had the right to draw at least ~$60B in order to pay off future lawsuits if the initial subsidiary's assets ran out, so there was never any real risk that it would leave suitholders unpaid. The switch into bankruptcy court is a way to arbitrate and organize the lawsuits, which was overturned because given the right to draw money from the J&J parent co the subsidiary wasn't actually at risk of bankruptcy.
- CameronNemo 3y agoSee also DuPont spinning out Chemours https://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2023/06/08/critics-skeptical-as-chemical-companies-agree-to-1-19-billion-pfas/ https://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2023/06/08/critics-s...
- TheAceOfHearts 3y ago> Financial research firm CreditSights estimates that 3M could ultimately be on the hook for nationwide PFAS cleanup costs of up to $142.7 billion. That’s almost triple the company’s $53 billion market capitalization, and that’s before any personal injury claims and other lawsuits. What does this actually mean? It's just showing off a big number without giving any real context. 3M is the only manufacturer of tons of important materials as I understand it, so it's not like they can just get erased from the market. But what does accountability actually mean in this context?
- delfinom 3y agoGovernment bailout, it's clearly too big to fail
- atoav 3y agoSocialization.
- CoastalCoder 3y agoI wonder - could a bankruptcy court simply transfer ownership of all 3M stock to the injured parties? Seems to me that would make them as whole as possible, while retaining 3M's ability to manufacture other crucial products.
- BobbyJo 3y agoThat's effectively how bankruptcy works but with more paperwork. You take assets (whether it's the deeds to the equipment or ownership of the whole company via stock) and you give the value of that (in the form of money or assets) to the claimants. Either way it's a transfer of wealth from the current business owners (stockholders) to claimants, just a matter of how that transfer happens.
- NickC25 3y agoExactly. They should be nationalized. If they are the only producer of a number of strategically important materials, nationalization needs to happen. The private markets are great, but cannot be trusted to clean up after their own mess - they have proven this time and time and time again. The taxpayers will ultimately be on the hook for this payout, and that's simply unacceptable. If the public has to bail out this company, at the very least, the board and C-Suite need to be liquidated and be fined substantially for this sort of behavior. They've known about the danger of these chemicals for almost 60 years, and not once did they (AFAIK) go to the government and actively ask for help to replace said chemicals with safer alternatives that don't literally last forever if consumed.
- pcurve 3y agoThe chemicals in question are of type PFAS and believe it or not, they're still legal to use today, though they're being phased out and banned in a few years. The problem is 3M scientists have know toxicity to human and have withheld the information to the public and regulators. Since 1970s.
- MagicMoonlight 3y agoAll those paper replacements for things like straws are coated with them :)
- nazka 3y agoThis is insane… We know it’s dangerous. But here it is still used in food ustensiles used by millions.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoProzac is PFAS. Everything is toxic when it hits a certain human concentration levels. Now that we know, we have to manage waste better.
- Sytten 3y agoThey are used in all kinds of products that I personaly use everyday from pans to dental floss. And the replacements are not better, they just dont have studies yet that prove they are toxic...
- deserialized 3y agoOh well that excuses all of the poisoning, clearly
- BSEdlMMldESB 3y agodisbanding this corporation doesn't undo decades of pollution either. I doubt very much that they're the only ones able to manufacture this stuff
- xen2xen1 3y agoThe most depressing part of this? Stopping the creation of PFAS might help out kids or grandkids, but we're kind of screwed. Well, unless you give blood a lot?
- mrguyorama 3y agoInvest in leaches!
- BiteCode_dev 3y agoGiving plasma is actually better if you want to remove PFAS. And giving either is a good thing, so if this can mean people will give 2 or 3 times a year, everybody wins.
- npongratz 3y agoSuppose I give plasma or blood, and it removes PFAS from my body. Does it give those PFAS to the recipient of my plasma/blood?
- BiteCode_dev 3y agoYes, but: - it removes only a fraction of it from your body, so it gives only a fraction of it to the recipient. - if you need a donation, this dose compared to what you get in exchange is usually a very good deal - some blood don't actually go to people, but is used for manufacturing drugs, science tests or expires - hopefully people don't get blood transfusions very often and have a blood level of PFAS close to the average and the given blood. Hopefully.
- quesera 3y agoAlso: recipient likely has a similar PFAS concentration in their blood already, so there's minimal net impact (aside from the life-saving part!)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bastard_op 3y agoSo what, they'll pay a few million (even few billion) fine, and go back to doing it anyways. Having grown up as part of the "Maryvale Cancer Cluster" in Arizona in the 70's with DuPont dumping fluorine and other bad things into the well water and giving most of my family leukemia, cancer, and who knows what else. Class action ensued, DuPont lawyers fought it for 30 years, end of the day my dad got a check for $200 dollars. Thanks, sorry about that leukemia there...
- johnfn 3y agoHuh? The point of an 'existential' trial is that it's 'existential' i.e. it threatens the existence of the business.
- BiteCode_dev 3y agoI'm always amazed that in cases like this nobody gets crazy and try to get justice themselves. There are so many guns in the US, and we hear about rogue snipers and school shooters, but never about one guy that decided a CEO should pay for his bad deeds in blood. Maybe it shows that the average human being is quite stable and peaceful?
- rob-olmos 3y ago3M is also in another lawsuit for defective earplugs supplied to the US military: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/legal/product-liability/3m-earplug-lawsuit/ https://www.forbes.com/advisor/legal/product-liability/3m-ea... Additional info: https://www.millerandzois.com/products-liability/3m-combat-arms-earplug-lawsuit-attorneys/ https://www.millerandzois.com/products-liability/3m-combat-a...
- giraffe_lady 3y agoThe difference in harm between these two transgressions is a few orders of magnitude at least.
- tclancy 3y agoI think the idea is suggesting a problem at the corporate culture level.
- giraffe_lady 3y agoYeah I mean maybe mussolini liked to kick puppies too but I don't really need it as evidence of his character you know what I'm saying? The pfas stuff is so heinous it downplays it to even mention this other thing in the same context.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago3M acquired that company and then was on the hook. A few bad decisions at the wrong level can sink a company.
- BSEdlMMldESB 3y agoI wonder what the role of this corporation has been in historically 'hiding away' (making the knowledge 'safe') the majority of "our" know-how around industrial scale chemistry? I am curious about this because they did to chemistry what (? the nuclear bomb programmes?) did to physics? This that I have seen happen against computer technology during my short time on earth so far (related: "war on general purpose computers"). ...that for the sake of safety (you wouldn't want randos making TNT? then nuclear bomb... now computer malware or 'dangerous' AI tools?) a way is found to make knowledge inaccessible (for safety's sake) on the level of reasoning i'm seeking, 3M is one of many examples of an older 'deeper' practice around knowledge, accessibility, government, organization-constructing, etc...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- clnq 3y agoAt these times, it's good to remember that PFAS will very likely kill more people than any terror attack so far. Among cancers, it is a known contributor to obesity and many other diseases. We go to war over terror attacks. And for this, we probably won't even bankrupt 3M, nor DuPont. To my mind, it brings into question what qualifies as terrorism. Is it not terrorism if many people die to push the stock price up when it's terrorism if many people die for some other selfish end?
- sneak 3y agoAccidents due to carelessness and greed lack the same intent as terrorism. You may recall Exxon's famous memos from the 60s or 70s when they realized that continued use of fossil fuels was going to incinerate the planet.
- clnq 3y agoIs it still carelessness if one knows they are going to kill people for their own selfish, perhaps greedy, goals? I don't see such a big difference in intent. I think it's more that terrorist groups have people that do what they do for selfish reasons very directly. And corporate groups have people that do what they do for selfish reasons in a way where they are acting on behalf of shareholders' greed, and they aren't really directly harming anyone right now. So it's very indirect. But the intent is kind of similar morally - personal gain at the cost of crimes against humanity, right?
- oatmeal1 3y agohttps://archive.ph/vYbB7 https://archive.ph/vYbB7
- jeff-davis 3y agoIf the chemicals are bad, and everywhere, we need a reaction time faster than 50 years. For new inventions (not well-known issues), it would be far better to be fast-reacting and no-fault rather than slow-reacting with vengeance. Run studies as the use of the chemicals scales up and start raising warnings early so the company has time to collect more information and adapt formulas or applications. As the costs become apparent, start placing those costs on the companies ahead of time rather than 50 years later. That will sort out who really needs the new chemical, versus who just wants to spray it everywhere.
- missedthecue 3y agoSometimes it's not possible to get fast reaction times. If I were the first person to invent asbestos, I could use it for the next 20 or 30 years and not get any symptoms. But of course we know in hindsight it is highly carcinogenic.
- eesmith 3y ago> Run studies as the use of the chemicals scales up and start raising warnings early so the company has time to collect more information and adapt formulas or applications Part of the issue, and why this is 'existential', is that 3M appears to have known about the issues and deliberately hid the studies from the government or downplayed them. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_substances#Corporate_and_federal_government_suppression_of_information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_subst... citing https://theintercept.com/2018/07/31/3m-pfas-minnesota-pfoa-pfos/ https://theintercept.com/2018/07/31/3m-pfas-minnesota-pfoa-p... where you can read: ] A lawsuit filed by Minnesota against 3M, the company that first developed and sold PFOS and PFOA, the two best-known PFAS compounds, has revealed that the company knew that these chemicals were accumulating in people’s blood for more than 40 years. 3M researchers documented the chemicals in fish, just as the Michigan scientist did, but they did so back in the 1970s. That same decade, 3M scientists realized that the compounds they produced were toxic. The company even had evidence back then of the compounds’ effects on the immune system, studies of which are just now driving the lower levels put forward by the ATSDR, as well as several states and the European Union. For a large company like 3M, the goal isn't to figure out who really needs the new chemical, it's to figure out how to profit the most from that chemical. And who will fund all the testing required? I can just hear the cry of "too much government paperwork" and "bureaucratic obstacles in the way of the innovation and the free market."
- pleb_nz 3y agoI can't believe people do this just to make money. And it's not just this case, for example, our food supply is filled with stuff that is really bad for us, barely passes as edible, and is even sold as a healthy alternative in a lot of cases. For example, vegetable oils and cooking with vegetable oils and the growing evidence behind how bad they are, they extremely highly processed and in some cases not even an edible product until the last refinement step. We're out own worst enemies and greed is so often the issue.
- aio2 3y agoAll of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone. Blaise Pascal
- elwebmaster 3y agoOr fake “beyond” meats. Highly processed, who knows what. The opposite of fresh vegetables and meat.
- joshe 3y agoStrange that we sue companies for selling products we haven't even bothered to ban yet. The idea that 3M "knew the whole time" is kooky when we aren't even sure now, 15 years after people started looking into this, whether we should ban them. Scientists, regulators and legislatures should decide what the rules are and then hold companies accountable for actually breaking the rules.
- turnerdhooch 3y agoRegulatory capture.
- 4ec0755f5522 3y agoHard disagree; companies should be responsible for harm caused by their products regardless of whether it's "legal". This is "loophole thinking" and it only benefits bad actors.
- liquidise 3y agoCare you elaborate? I'm genuinely curious about how this plays out in in practice. From the perspective of a driver, this fits: i am held responsible for harm i cause even if i was otherwise driving lawfully. But should my car maker be held responsible for the harm their car caused under lawful use?
- fluoridation 3y agoDoing something that's not illegal is not a loophole. A loophole involves doing something that would otherwise be illegal in a manner that makes it ambiguously not illegal, often due to a poorly-made law.
- graeme 3y agoA lawsuit is about harm. If it's a civil lawsuit, you can absolutely be sued for doing things which you know to be harmful to others, even if they aren't crimes. That's what a tort is. The purpose of such private lawsuits it to give people a legal mechanism for redress that doesn't involve physically attacking each other or trying to legislate everything.
- greenie_beans 3y agoput a fuckin CEO in jail for once
- aio2 3y agoagreed
- mensetmanusman 3y agoThey are in elderly care or dead. This is from the 70s-80s.
- orangepurple 3y agoIn the future there will be a $200 trillion dollar lawsuit against tire manufacturers and brake disc manufacturers once people learn about those
- mensetmanusman 3y agoYeah, people don't know that everything that last long is pfas. Tires are a great example.
- someweirdperson 3y agoThose are perfectly safe. People rolling those wheels and breaking is what's causing all the harm.
- tiffanyh 3y agoIs this similar to “C8” / DuPont?
- mensetmanusman 3y agoProzac, Lipitor, Flonase and about of third of new pharmaceuticals are PFAS. Humans can figure out how to use this technology. Destroying 3M just means it gets made in China with no oversight. Lawyers will win in the end regardless of what happens.
- patapong 3y agoI always find the discrepancy between drugs and chemicals odd. Drugs require years of research to prove that they are safe, whereas chemicals can seemingly be put into the environment as long as they are not proven to cause harm, and even then in some cases, despite the effects of chemicals being released into the environment potentially causing very bad effects.
- thevagrant 3y agoThe issue is 3M has moved to stop using forever chemicals. Destroying 3M could mean companies that continue manufacturing the chemicals win out. It'd be better if 3M received a penalty (severe but manageable over time) and mandate to set a higher bar for industry practices (or risk further consequences). Govt is far too slow to regulate.