7 ms·

You keep moving the goalposts. I don't see why the executives should be liable as long as they didn't personally choose the foam or hid the complaints. In a b

by vdaea 3y ago

You keep moving the goalposts. I don't see why the executives should be liable as long as they didn't personally choose the foam or hid the complaints. In a big company it's impossible for a single person to know everything that's happening at every level.

DannyBee 3y ago
Here, as an exec, i'll offer a reason: They are paid to be liable, and usually have the explicit authority to bind the company with their decisions (IE signing/etc authority). Part of the job is to be accountable for the decisions your organization makes, whether you made them personally or not. The buck stops here, so to speak. This is intentional - in large companies actual responsibility for failure can be so diffuse that nobody would otherwise ever held accountable. If you break down what happened here into pieces: 1. Root cause of problem 2. Responsibility for the problem 3. Accountability for the problem 4. What accountability looks like This amounts to: 1 is "someone chose to use the wrong foam" for $reasons. 2 is whoever did that, probably not an exec. In large companies, or complex problems, responsibility can also be very spread out. 3 is what we are discussing - I would argue strongly that executives should be held civilly accountable for the decisions made by their organizations and criminally accountable for decisions made by their organization that they had direct knowledge of. In general, execs usually are indemnified by the company for reasonable business decisions they make, so holding them civilly liable will not result in personal liabilty for them except to the degree they lied/hid/committed fraud, which is basically what you want. 4 i honestly have no idea what to do here.
- emacsen 3y ago
  The argument that the execs must be the one to choose the foam to be liable is a bit silly. While in some white collar crimes, you will find individual actions by execs, such as in banking and tobacco, that's rarely the case. Here there's evidence of a coverup- of deaths reported and Phillips choosing to not disclose or recall until forced to. An argument could be made that until that point, there's no action by the executive that is wrong- though again, it's a medical device so it should be held up to high standards. Once the company had reason to believe that their device could be dangerous, it had a duty to act. Executives were surely notified when there was a liability concern, and the decision not to act on them is the trigger event. Was it the CEO? Maybe not? Phillips is a huge corporation, but I'd venture a guess that even in a company that size, there's a bit of "pass the buck" and higher up executives knew something of the situation, and if someone knew of deaths, they had a responsibility to look into it.
  - DannyBee 3y ago
    "The argument that the execs must be the one to choose the foam to be liable is a bit silly. While in some white collar crimes, you will find individual actions by execs, such as in banking and tobacco, that's rarely the case." Sure. Generally criminal liability (in the US) requires a "guilty mind". That is, you have to have the intention/knowledge of wrongdoing for it to be criminal, regardless of the acts. This isn't always true (there are strict liability crimes, etc), but it's mostly true. What you are suggesting would not really be in line with that, at least in the US. Now, we could as a society decide we have a big enough problem that we want more strict liablity crimes for execs. I don' feel like i have a good enough understanding of the practical tradeoffs/data to have a strong opinion there yet.
- olliej 3y ago
  No, the company should be civilly liable, the individuals have criminal liabilities. Alternatively, who is going to jail if a company is found guilty of a crime that requires jail time, if not the executives and board of directors? Again by the specific claims used to justify executive compensation, they're responsible. The result of companies being criminally liable, and individuals being civilly liable, is that no one is criminally liable, the executives running the company just have to pay fines, that the company will then cover, either directly due to contractual indemnification, or by golden parachutes and similar. If a company's executives are running the company properly (1) should be caught before production starts, failing to do so is the result of executive decisions: if an executive chooses to not adequately fund safety and QA tests, that isn't the fault of the designers and engineers. If issues start coming in after the product is on the market, it is the decision of the company executives to halt production, to re-do the safety analysis, or - as in this case - withhold any information and pretend there's no problem.
catchnear4321 3y ago
> In a big company it's impossible for a single person to know everything that's happening at every level. you do not need to know everything about a thing to be responsible for it. do you own a pet? if yes, are you a veterinarian? if no, how do you care for your pet if you can’t run a blood screen?
sofixa 3y ago
> I don't see why the executives should be liable as long as they didn't personally choose the foam or hid the complaints. Because that's what your job is as a higher up. You direct stuff, which comes with the responsibility of the results of that directing. In exchange you have a lot of power and get paid handsomely. It wasn't Dennis Muilenburg personally who coded the shitty unredudant software that made Boeing 737 Maxes crash themselves into the ground, but he was forced to resign nonetheless (even though he got a golden parachute so it was more of a reward than a punishment). It wasn't Vincent Van Quickenborne who personally didn't process the necessary paperwork that left a terrorist free in Belgium and allowed the later to murder people, but he took accountability and resigned. There's a whole legal doctrine in international law when it comes to war crimes, called the command responsibility, where commanders are responsible for crimes committed by their subordinates (unless they're American, then they all get medals).

by vdaea 3y ago

DannyBee 3y ago

Here, as an exec, i'll offer a reason: They are paid to be liable, and usually have the explicit authority to bind the company with their decisions (IE signing/etc authority). Part of the job is to be accountable for the decisions your organization makes, whether you made them personally or not. The buck stops here, so to speak. This is intentional - in large companies actual responsibility for failure can be so diffuse that nobody would otherwise ever held accountable. If you break down what happened here into pieces: 1. Root cause of problem 2. Responsibility for the problem 3. Accountability for the problem 4. What accountability looks like This amounts to: 1 is "someone chose to use the wrong foam" for $reasons. 2 is whoever did that, probably not an exec. In large companies, or complex problems, responsibility can also be very spread out. 3 is what we are discussing - I would argue strongly that executives should be held civilly accountable for the decisions made by their organizations and criminally accountable for decisions made by their organization that they had direct knowledge of. In general, execs usually are indemnified by the company for reasonable business decisions they make, so holding them civilly liable will not result in personal liabilty for them except to the degree they lied/hid/committed fraud, which is basically what you want. 4 i honestly have no idea what to do here.

emacsen 3y ago
The argument that the execs must be the one to choose the foam to be liable is a bit silly. While in some white collar crimes, you will find individual actions by execs, such as in banking and tobacco, that's rarely the case. Here there's evidence of a coverup- of deaths reported and Phillips choosing to not disclose or recall until forced to. An argument could be made that until that point, there's no action by the executive that is wrong- though again, it's a medical device so it should be held up to high standards. Once the company had reason to believe that their device could be dangerous, it had a duty to act. Executives were surely notified when there was a liability concern, and the decision not to act on them is the trigger event. Was it the CEO? Maybe not? Phillips is a huge corporation, but I'd venture a guess that even in a company that size, there's a bit of "pass the buck" and higher up executives knew something of the situation, and if someone knew of deaths, they had a responsibility to look into it.
- DannyBee 3y ago
  "The argument that the execs must be the one to choose the foam to be liable is a bit silly. While in some white collar crimes, you will find individual actions by execs, such as in banking and tobacco, that's rarely the case." Sure. Generally criminal liability (in the US) requires a "guilty mind". That is, you have to have the intention/knowledge of wrongdoing for it to be criminal, regardless of the acts. This isn't always true (there are strict liability crimes, etc), but it's mostly true. What you are suggesting would not really be in line with that, at least in the US. Now, we could as a society decide we have a big enough problem that we want more strict liablity crimes for execs. I don' feel like i have a good enough understanding of the practical tradeoffs/data to have a strong opinion there yet.
olliej 3y ago
No, the company should be civilly liable, the individuals have criminal liabilities. Alternatively, who is going to jail if a company is found guilty of a crime that requires jail time, if not the executives and board of directors? Again by the specific claims used to justify executive compensation, they're responsible. The result of companies being criminally liable, and individuals being civilly liable, is that no one is criminally liable, the executives running the company just have to pay fines, that the company will then cover, either directly due to contractual indemnification, or by golden parachutes and similar. If a company's executives are running the company properly (1) should be caught before production starts, failing to do so is the result of executive decisions: if an executive chooses to not adequately fund safety and QA tests, that isn't the fault of the designers and engineers. If issues start coming in after the product is on the market, it is the decision of the company executives to halt production, to re-do the safety analysis, or - as in this case - withhold any information and pretend there's no problem.

catchnear4321 3y ago

> In a big company it's impossible for a single person to know everything that's happening at every level. you do not need to know everything about a thing to be responsible for it. do you own a pet? if yes, are you a veterinarian? if no, how do you care for your pet if you can’t run a blood screen?

sofixa 3y ago

> I don't see why the executives should be liable as long as they didn't personally choose the foam or hid the complaints. Because that's what your job is as a higher up. You direct stuff, which comes with the responsibility of the results of that directing. In exchange you have a lot of power and get paid handsomely. It wasn't Dennis Muilenburg personally who coded the shitty unredudant software that made Boeing 737 Maxes crash themselves into the ground, but he was forced to resign nonetheless (even though he got a golden parachute so it was more of a reward than a punishment). It wasn't Vincent Van Quickenborne who personally didn't process the necessary paperwork that left a terrorist free in Belgium and allowed the later to murder people, but he took accountability and resigned. There's a whole legal doctrine in international law when it comes to war crimes, called the command responsibility, where commanders are responsible for crimes committed by their subordinates (unless they're American, then they all get medals).