9 ms·

Court approves 3M multi-billion dollar settlement over PFAS in drinking water

200 points by geox 3y ago

jmakov 3y ago
If anybody just gets a speeding ticket and includes that in the price of their product, how can the system self correct?
- cfiggers 3y ago
  I dunno man, $12 BILLION is a pretty serious speeding ticket
  - skrebbel 3y ago
    I think the argument is that people doing crime go to jail, so when a company does crime, maybe the same should happen.
  - konfusinomicon 3y ago
    not when you have 3M billions
  - idiotsecant 3y ago
    3M sells about 1.3 billion USD of the stuff yearly at about 16% margin, so figure about 200 million USD in profit per year. 12 billion represents about 60 current profit-years of production.They invented the stuff in the 30s but have been churning it out in quantity since the 50s. 12 billion isn't a speeding ticket but it also isn't even all the profit they made on it. In addition to that, is their obligation to pay their profits or to make whole a world soaked in forever chemicals? Because the latter would be way more than 12 billion.
    - tome 3y ago
      I'm not entirely sure what you're saying. Are you saying that 60 years of profit on a product that's been churned out in quantity for 70 years is a small fine?
      - justinclift 3y ago
        > 12 billion isn't a speeding ticket but it also isn't even all the profit they made on it. They literally said "it isn't even all the profit they made". That seems pretty clear.
        tome 3y ago
        It's not clear to me!
        asadotzler 3y ago
        [flagged]
        justinclift 3y ago
        > That this simple idea seems a stretch for you might be a signal to you that your reality is distorted in this area and could use a re-examining. That seems pretty unwarranted. :(
        justinclift 3y ago
        They're being fined less than the profit they made. Surely they should be getting fined more than how much they profited? Preferably (at a minimum) several times the amount, so they (and others) aren't keen to do it again.
    - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
      Indeed, the real justice would be to make them pay for cleanup efforts for the next 200 years
      - ben_w 3y ago
        How are you planning on enforcing that given: 1) bankruptcy is a thing, and 2) that period exceeds the lifespan of not only those responsible, but also any kids they might have conceived in extreme old age, and people can just… choose not work for (or invest in) a company that's been stuck with a long-term obligation. I can see how it would be possible to make criminal liability stick on all members of a chain of command, corporate or otherwise, responsible for some decision. I can't see how setting a multi-lifetime punishment could possibly work.
        ClumsyPilot 3y ago
        > 1) bankruptcy is a thing Students loans, famously, can’t be discharged in bankruptcy, and follow you your entire life. Should we have one set of law for the capital class and another for mere peasants?
        mattmaroon 3y ago
        When you sign up for student loans, you are aware (or at least should be) that they can't be discharged in bankruptcy. They aren't dischargable in bankruptcy because if they were, far fewer would be made, and far fewer non-rich people would go to college, and we don't want that. Nothing would perpetuate class divisions more than restricting education to those with money. Nobody would ever get a student loan for an anthropology degree again. I don't necessarily agree with this system, as an 18 yr old probably does not have the life experience to make such large financial decisions, and I think perhaps far fewer people should go to college for things of no economic value, but the system has logic to it. It's meant to benefit the "peasants". Rich people don't need student loans and can pay for their kids' degrees. Fines aren't the same. A company only has so much money. Many of the owners of the company are pensions funds, etc., that are held by the middle class. You can't reasonably squeeze money from everyone who had an ETF that contained 3M. You need to allow corporations to file bankruptcy to have a healthy economy, in fact, America's bankruptcy laws are (according to some economists) one of the reasons we have such a strong economy.
  - jajko 3y ago
    Do you see the company struggling to stay afloat, breaking up, selling parts to competition just to survive? For poisoning half of planet and killing god knows how many, yes thats a (bit bigger) speeding ticket, nothing more.
- xyst 3y ago
  Executives serving actual jail time. Prohibited from joining the boards of public/private companies. Personal liability.
  - konschubert 3y ago
    But this would have to be limited to cases where you can prove personal intent or personal gross negligence by the executive. Otherwise you’re effectively making companies illegal.
    - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
      > Otherwise you’re effectively making companies illegal. It's more like making illegal behaviour by companies to be illegal. There's a disconnect where behaviour that would result in jail time for people, doesn't result in jail time if performed by companies and that seems wrong to me. If an individual poisons a water supply, they're not going to be getting just a fine.
      - konschubert 3y ago
        I don’t think a lot of ppl would want to take a job where they are liable for the actions of others.
        littlestymaar 3y ago
        Don't underestimate the appeal of a 7 digit salary and the position of power you get with it. There a orders of magnitude more candidates for CEOs positions than there are jobs, so it's not like we would run out of people to do the job if we increased the responsibilities.
        ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
        Isn't that exactly what is required of CEOs and executives? If a company doesn't have liability for upper management, then where's their incentive to not instruct employees to behave illegally?
- sp332 3y ago
  If they could have raised prices, they would have already done it.
  - mattmaroon 3y ago
    Right, they aren't the only manufacturer. There are a dozen major ones. People always miss this about competitive markets. They are already charging the highest price they believe they can.
- lettergram 3y ago
  The fine was the 1/3 of yearly revenue, in 2023 their revenue was $32.68B, net income was -$7B (that’s a negative seven billion). Im not sure of the payment timeline or if they have insurance, but it seems likely this will wipe out a few years of profitability and may force the sale of business units. That said, I do think personal culpability is probably a better incentive and more ethically reasonable depending on the circumstances. Though that’d have to be criminal neglect, using laws we probably already have. In other words, this is a civil penalty, not the same as a criminal case with higher burdens of proof and motives need to be established.
  - rahimnathwani 3y ago
    this will wipe out a few years of profitability They've already recognized most of the loss, so most of the impact on profits is in the past. From the Q2 2023 10-Q: During the first six months of 2023, as a result of ongoing review and recent developments in ongoing environmental matters and litigation (including the proposed PWS Settlement), the Company increased its accrual for PFAS-related other environmental liabilities by $10.3 billion and made related payments of $38 million. As of June 30, 2023, the Company had recorded liabilities of $10.9 billion for “other environmental liabilities.” These amounts are reflected in the consolidated balance sheet within other current liabilities ($0.3 billion) and other liabilities ($10.6 billion). The accruals represent the Company’s estimate of the probable loss in connection with the environmental matters and PFAS-related matters and litigation described above. The Company is not able to estimate a possible loss or range of possible loss in excess of the established accruals at this time.
- backwardation_b 3y ago
  The system self corrects by companies moving to a different supplier. If 3M has to increase prices (they will) to offset the settlement costs, then other suppliers will be comparatively cheaper. 3M share price and profit will decrease which incentivizes the board and or shareholders to encourage safer (read: legal) business practices.
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    You are selling a fantasy, a spherical cow. As the OP said, The original people responsible made bank and retired. The original shareholders cashed out. this does not encourage anything.
  - rolandog 3y ago
    The people affected by these "corrections" are the workers that would be laid off due to decreasing revenue,... In order to maintain the expected profits that result in dividend payments to shareholders. So, one could make the case that the workers get punished by the board of directors' bad decisions.
  - thayne 3y ago
    That clearly doesn't work. The fines are often less than the profits made. And the individuals and shareholders have already made a fortune by the time the payments come due, and can just move on to the next company and do the same thing there.
  - checkyoursudo 3y ago
    How does your model account for the probability that cheaper competitors are simply bad actors who have not yet been caught? In fact, without something like criminal penalties, why would the board encourage safer/legal business practices? Seems like they might equally say, well that was a good run now find us another dastardly product that can bring our prices back down to our competitors.
  - int_19h 3y ago
    And those "other suppliers" will be 3M - same owners, same board, same executives - under a different name.
- wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
  For these cases of gross misconduct affecting health of people, criminal charges should actually be made against individuals who made the decisions.
  - elaus 3y ago
    Are you talking about the _responsibility_ that is the justification for paychecks in the millions? It seems to end somewhere before jail sentences for most execs...
- alexashka 3y ago
  What makes you think the system isn't working as intended? What would 'correct' even look like? Occasional human sacrifice to appease the masses as is being called for on here?
calvinmorrison 3y ago
I would like to see particularly untrustworthy companies stripped of all assets, buildings razed and executives jailed
- idiotsecant 3y ago
  Jail executives? Sure. Tear down 3m? Why? 3M is useful. They make a lot of stuff we need.
  - yuppiepuppie 3y ago
    Im guessing they want a mechanism to hold shareholders feet to the fire. I venture to guess that there are better options for this.
    - struant 3y ago
      These fines should just be paid by shareholders (backdated to whoever profited from their misdeeds)
      - ben_w 3y ago
        That kind of thing is called an "unlimited company", which exists, but is rare and puts off investments (but apparently makes borrowing easier?): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlimited_company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlimited_company Random "unsophisticated investors" (e.g. me) are supposed to get some degree of protection from catastrophic mistakes we can't be expected to recognise heading our way, in order to encourage us to participate in the stock market without having to worry we might inadvertently be taking on some fractional responsibility for a debt exceeding our net worth. Likewise, governments don't like it when pension funds are bankrupted because of what they invested in.
        calvinmorrison 3y ago
        Limited liability and other contraptions are just tools capital and feudalists use to avoid liability. In fact these should be reveresed. In fact most of these should be tried as RICO cases
BytesAndGears 3y ago
I’m more worried about the fact that it was allowed for so long. Sure, we’re doing the right thing by quitting PFAS and starting major cleanup efforts. But the system existed where people were incredibly negligent for years, knew they were hurting people, made boatloads of money, and retired. That same system exists in many oil-and-gas industries, drug marketing, and more. There are dozens of examples where this has happened in recent years, and that’s just the ones at large enough scale to be prosecuted. It’s still happening to this day. How do we start treating intentional negligence that leads to mass suffering and death as seriously as murder? It is individuals making these decisions, and they need to be held personally liable. The corporate veil is useful, and shouldn’t go away completely. But when an individual makes a decision that had a high probability of doing major harm, they should at least stop and raise the issue to a government agency, to limit their liability. If they do not take appropriate precautions, like getting explicit approval from government authorities, then they should be personally liable for the negligence.
- Y_Y 3y ago
  Is there a told-you-so list somewhere that catalogues these ongoing negligences? I'd love to see a comprehensive of the things that are known now, but not well-known yet.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    I suspect we're going to find plenty of food items to put on this list. Are we planning to jail or bankrupt the peddlers of sugar water? Sugar itself? Refined flour? Non-nutritive sweeteners? Fast food? Fast casual? Buffets? Potato chips? Chocolate? Beer? Wine? (Stop me when we get to some pseudo-vice that you sometimes enjoy.) At some point, I think you have to say "society decided at the time that selling Coke, Pepsi, fast food, potato chips, and wine was okay, and the people who sold that aren't subject to retroactive punishments for selling something that we pretty much knew was damaging to health of millions of people, but they chose to eat it anyway..."
- Buttons840 3y ago
  > But the system existed where people were incredibly negligent for years, knew they were hurting people, made boatloads of money, and retired.... It is individuals making these decisions, and they need to be held personally liable. Maybe people who have more than, say, 20 million dollars should be personally liable. This seems like a very conservative middle ground, because, as you say, these people have sometimes knowingly made decisions they knew would result in deaths. Taking away only some of their money is the least of punishments, and they would still be left rich and very comfortable. This should apply to almost anyone. I get that regular people deserve some protection from liability for just doing their job, but at some point society is paying you so much money that you owe us a little personal responsibility in return. Maybe it could be structured such that when a company is sued and loses, the company can then sue past employees who made the wrong decisions. Again, this liability would not be able to reduce an individual's wealth to less than 20 million, so employees don't have to worry about being completely ruined, but people shouldn't be able to control society warping amounts of wealth when the source of that wealth was incorrect and possibly corrupt decisions. Let's try including some responsibility with the merit.
VoodooJuJu 3y ago
We unfortunately see it far too often - corporate crimes that are punished with simple fines that become the cost of doing business. But we all know it's not justice. Justice would be criminal charges against the people within the corporation that actually did the crime. We're long overdue for some change here. Are there are any politicians or bills (past or present) that have floated the idea of exposing shareholder skin in the corporate game? If these people were threatened with serious prison time, capital punishment, or even worse - being forced to drive a used Kia the rest of their lives (materialists couldn't bear the shame), we'd see far less harm being done.
- CJefferson 3y ago
  Another option would be easier corporate death — all shares instantly voided. The government could decide what to do with the company, fold it, or sell it for scraps. Yes, there might be motivation for the government to “kill” companies for profits, but there is exactly the same (and proved many times!) issue with putting people in prison, so I don’t see why companies should get a special exception, they are “people” as well, or so I’m told.
  - always2slow 3y ago
    I think you're on the right track here.. corporate death, shares voided, assets frozen in perpetuity, buildings, land, machinery. Everything frozen forever to stand as a warning to the next executive or employee before doing something like this.
    - anonymousab 3y ago
      You can even start with corporate jail. No business operations of any kind allowed for weeks/months, be that preforming services for clients, servicing debts, contracts or payroll. And if that results in an existential threat to the company or a lot of lawsuits for failing to perform their obligations, then that would be the just results of the company's decisions. It would be as existentially threatening and crippling to a company as it currently is to the average member of society.
23B1 3y ago
I wonder how many HN readers are complicit in this same style of abuse towards customer data.
- aranchelk 3y ago
  In my mind privacy breaches don't even live on the same planet as large scale long term environmental damage.
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    But the same thinking leads to both. "Not my problem" or "just doing what the boss asked me to do, that must be OK" etc.
  - 23B1 3y ago
    ...yet. And I'm not just talking about privacy breaches, I'm talking about conscious, willful abuse.
phkahler 3y ago
To all the comments wanting some kind of personal accountability or justice, let's just point out that the government won't even ban stuff like this quickly. Companies are given time to phase it out. Just making a hard ban effective immediately is seen as too harsh, yet it is the most obvious thing to do and you're asking for much more.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mattmaroon 3y ago
  That's also a function of lack of strong evidence of harm. We're not even sure that people exposed to high levels of PFAs are suffering harm, let alone the other 99% of us. There's no mesothelioma-level smoking gun here even for firefighters, factory workers, etc., let alone those of us who are only exposed to it via drinking water. It's a mass hysteria, and while I'm certainly not saying it's benign, I've read the studies, and they remind me of the nutritional ones from the 90's we've all since abandoned where they just throw a bunch of claims at the wall, show a bunch of weak correlations in completely uncontrolled studies, and say "more research is needed".
  - forgetfreeman 3y ago
    Your comment also reminds me of the late 80s and early 90s when tobacco companies pumped massive amounts of cash into cancer research to muddy the water around the harms being caused by their products.
    - mattmaroon 3y ago
      Very different. The evidence was much stronger there. The correlations were so high as to be impossible to ignore. (It also helped that smoking was so prevalent across race/class/age etc that it practically controlled for all the other variables inherently, which is true of drinking water exposure to PFAs too.) There were conditions like emphysema that were basically unheard of in non-smokers (or people who worked in certain occupations that involved a lot of combustion byproducts) and common in smokers. The correlations here (at the levels most of us are exposed to) are incredibly weak. Don’t take my word for them, look them up. This is more like the link between aspartame and cancer. There’s no smoking gun, no high correlations. If you look up the symptoms “linked” to it, there are hundreds at least. Not all correlations are equal. But, I install R/O filters in my house because I am not certain it is not harmful and why take the chance? I’m just not certain it is harmful and I would need to be to support jailing people or banning the chemicals immediately and entirely.
deleted 3y ago
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tejohnso 3y ago
Who were the top level executives while this was going on? Why don't these articles ever lay blame properly? And what are the consequences for those individuals? And what is being done to ensure it doesn't happen again?
superkuh 3y ago
I would like to see 3M forced to pay the DNR of Minnesota and Wisconsin a similar amount for making the St. Croix and Mississippi rivers polluted enough that we can't eat the fish again (like the 1980s/90s before the mercury settled out).
siliconc0w 3y ago
There is some evidence (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9228135/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9228135/) that PFAS causes trans-generational dysfunction. Even if we somehow get it out of our environment - which we will never do - the damage already done can stay with us indefinity. They not only poisoned several generations, they poisoned future ones as well. There is no amount of money that can be be paid here.
- kurthr 3y ago
  Having read the article it's really not clear this it supports that analysis, "As expected, environmentally relevant PFAS levels did not affect survival." In particular, although the high levels of exposure (of one or more PFOS/PFOA) showed effects, there was reverse correlation at low levels. Of course this is in Zebra fish so I'd hesitate to guess the relevance for mammal or human populations. It does seem to most directly affect lipid metabolism including steroids, and is multi-generational. I'd be most worried where the chemical (waste) byproducts were used as fire suppressants rather than the small quantities found elsewhere. Those concentrations (hundreds of ppt) are much more worrying. People who sprayed their clothes, couches, tires with scotchguard were probably also already exposed to 100s of times higher lifetime doses than they will ever see through environmental sources at <10ppt (still above proposed limits). https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/pfas_contamination/map/ https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/pfas_contamination/map/
ein0p 3y ago
I’m not even sure what a true “settlement” would look like in a case like this. Usually a settlement serves to at least partially repair the damage to the plaintiff. In this case the damage can’t be repaired at all. If there was a crime committed people need to go to jail in such cases. Unequal application of justice: someone steals a donut and ends up in jail, yet, another person person dumps tons of toxic sludge in a river and they get to “settle” using the money that’s not even their own.

200 points by geox 3y ago

If anybody just gets a speeding ticket and includes that in the price of their product, how can the system self correct?

cfiggers 3y ago
I dunno man, $12 BILLION is a pretty serious speeding ticket
- skrebbel 3y ago
  I think the argument is that people doing crime go to jail, so when a company does crime, maybe the same should happen.
- konfusinomicon 3y ago
  not when you have 3M billions
- idiotsecant 3y ago
  3M sells about 1.3 billion USD of the stuff yearly at about 16% margin, so figure about 200 million USD in profit per year. 12 billion represents about 60 current profit-years of production.They invented the stuff in the 30s but have been churning it out in quantity since the 50s. 12 billion isn't a speeding ticket but it also isn't even all the profit they made on it. In addition to that, is their obligation to pay their profits or to make whole a world soaked in forever chemicals? Because the latter would be way more than 12 billion.
  - tome 3y ago
    I'm not entirely sure what you're saying. Are you saying that 60 years of profit on a product that's been churned out in quantity for 70 years is a small fine?
    - justinclift 3y ago
      > 12 billion isn't a speeding ticket but it also isn't even all the profit they made on it. They literally said "it isn't even all the profit they made". That seems pretty clear.
      - tome 3y ago
        It's not clear to me!
        asadotzler 3y ago
        [flagged]
        justinclift 3y ago
        > That this simple idea seems a stretch for you might be a signal to you that your reality is distorted in this area and could use a re-examining. That seems pretty unwarranted. :(
        justinclift 3y ago
        They're being fined less than the profit they made. Surely they should be getting fined more than how much they profited? Preferably (at a minimum) several times the amount, so they (and others) aren't keen to do it again.
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    Indeed, the real justice would be to make them pay for cleanup efforts for the next 200 years
    - ben_w 3y ago
      How are you planning on enforcing that given: 1) bankruptcy is a thing, and 2) that period exceeds the lifespan of not only those responsible, but also any kids they might have conceived in extreme old age, and people can just… choose not work for (or invest in) a company that's been stuck with a long-term obligation. I can see how it would be possible to make criminal liability stick on all members of a chain of command, corporate or otherwise, responsible for some decision. I can't see how setting a multi-lifetime punishment could possibly work.
      - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
        > 1) bankruptcy is a thing Students loans, famously, can’t be discharged in bankruptcy, and follow you your entire life. Should we have one set of law for the capital class and another for mere peasants?
        mattmaroon 3y ago
        When you sign up for student loans, you are aware (or at least should be) that they can't be discharged in bankruptcy. They aren't dischargable in bankruptcy because if they were, far fewer would be made, and far fewer non-rich people would go to college, and we don't want that. Nothing would perpetuate class divisions more than restricting education to those with money. Nobody would ever get a student loan for an anthropology degree again. I don't necessarily agree with this system, as an 18 yr old probably does not have the life experience to make such large financial decisions, and I think perhaps far fewer people should go to college for things of no economic value, but the system has logic to it. It's meant to benefit the "peasants". Rich people don't need student loans and can pay for their kids' degrees. Fines aren't the same. A company only has so much money. Many of the owners of the company are pensions funds, etc., that are held by the middle class. You can't reasonably squeeze money from everyone who had an ETF that contained 3M. You need to allow corporations to file bankruptcy to have a healthy economy, in fact, America's bankruptcy laws are (according to some economists) one of the reasons we have such a strong economy.
- jajko 3y ago
  Do you see the company struggling to stay afloat, breaking up, selling parts to competition just to survive? For poisoning half of planet and killing god knows how many, yes thats a (bit bigger) speeding ticket, nothing more.
xyst 3y ago
Executives serving actual jail time. Prohibited from joining the boards of public/private companies. Personal liability.
- konschubert 3y ago
  But this would have to be limited to cases where you can prove personal intent or personal gross negligence by the executive. Otherwise you’re effectively making companies illegal.
  - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
    > Otherwise you’re effectively making companies illegal. It's more like making illegal behaviour by companies to be illegal. There's a disconnect where behaviour that would result in jail time for people, doesn't result in jail time if performed by companies and that seems wrong to me. If an individual poisons a water supply, they're not going to be getting just a fine.
    - konschubert 3y ago
      I don’t think a lot of ppl would want to take a job where they are liable for the actions of others.
      - littlestymaar 3y ago
        Don't underestimate the appeal of a 7 digit salary and the position of power you get with it. There a orders of magnitude more candidates for CEOs positions than there are jobs, so it's not like we would run out of people to do the job if we increased the responsibilities.
      - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
        Isn't that exactly what is required of CEOs and executives? If a company doesn't have liability for upper management, then where's their incentive to not instruct employees to behave illegally?
sp332 3y ago
If they could have raised prices, they would have already done it.
- mattmaroon 3y ago
  Right, they aren't the only manufacturer. There are a dozen major ones. People always miss this about competitive markets. They are already charging the highest price they believe they can.
lettergram 3y ago
The fine was the 1/3 of yearly revenue, in 2023 their revenue was $32.68B, net income was -$7B (that’s a negative seven billion). Im not sure of the payment timeline or if they have insurance, but it seems likely this will wipe out a few years of profitability and may force the sale of business units. That said, I do think personal culpability is probably a better incentive and more ethically reasonable depending on the circumstances. Though that’d have to be criminal neglect, using laws we probably already have. In other words, this is a civil penalty, not the same as a criminal case with higher burdens of proof and motives need to be established.
- rahimnathwani 3y ago
  this will wipe out a few years of profitability They've already recognized most of the loss, so most of the impact on profits is in the past. From the Q2 2023 10-Q: During the first six months of 2023, as a result of ongoing review and recent developments in ongoing environmental matters and litigation (including the proposed PWS Settlement), the Company increased its accrual for PFAS-related other environmental liabilities by $10.3 billion and made related payments of $38 million. As of June 30, 2023, the Company had recorded liabilities of $10.9 billion for “other environmental liabilities.” These amounts are reflected in the consolidated balance sheet within other current liabilities ($0.3 billion) and other liabilities ($10.6 billion). The accruals represent the Company’s estimate of the probable loss in connection with the environmental matters and PFAS-related matters and litigation described above. The Company is not able to estimate a possible loss or range of possible loss in excess of the established accruals at this time.
backwardation_b 3y ago
The system self corrects by companies moving to a different supplier. If 3M has to increase prices (they will) to offset the settlement costs, then other suppliers will be comparatively cheaper. 3M share price and profit will decrease which incentivizes the board and or shareholders to encourage safer (read: legal) business practices.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  You are selling a fantasy, a spherical cow. As the OP said, The original people responsible made bank and retired. The original shareholders cashed out. this does not encourage anything.
- rolandog 3y ago
  The people affected by these "corrections" are the workers that would be laid off due to decreasing revenue,... In order to maintain the expected profits that result in dividend payments to shareholders. So, one could make the case that the workers get punished by the board of directors' bad decisions.
- thayne 3y ago
  That clearly doesn't work. The fines are often less than the profits made. And the individuals and shareholders have already made a fortune by the time the payments come due, and can just move on to the next company and do the same thing there.
- checkyoursudo 3y ago
  How does your model account for the probability that cheaper competitors are simply bad actors who have not yet been caught? In fact, without something like criminal penalties, why would the board encourage safer/legal business practices? Seems like they might equally say, well that was a good run now find us another dastardly product that can bring our prices back down to our competitors.
- int_19h 3y ago
  And those "other suppliers" will be 3M - same owners, same board, same executives - under a different name.
wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
For these cases of gross misconduct affecting health of people, criminal charges should actually be made against individuals who made the decisions.
- elaus 3y ago
  Are you talking about the _responsibility_ that is the justification for paychecks in the millions? It seems to end somewhere before jail sentences for most execs...
alexashka 3y ago
What makes you think the system isn't working as intended? What would 'correct' even look like? Occasional human sacrifice to appease the masses as is being called for on here?

calvinmorrison 3y ago

I would like to see particularly untrustworthy companies stripped of all assets, buildings razed and executives jailed

idiotsecant 3y ago
Jail executives? Sure. Tear down 3m? Why? 3M is useful. They make a lot of stuff we need.
- yuppiepuppie 3y ago
  Im guessing they want a mechanism to hold shareholders feet to the fire. I venture to guess that there are better options for this.
  - struant 3y ago
    These fines should just be paid by shareholders (backdated to whoever profited from their misdeeds)
    - ben_w 3y ago
      That kind of thing is called an "unlimited company", which exists, but is rare and puts off investments (but apparently makes borrowing easier?): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlimited_company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlimited_company Random "unsophisticated investors" (e.g. me) are supposed to get some degree of protection from catastrophic mistakes we can't be expected to recognise heading our way, in order to encourage us to participate in the stock market without having to worry we might inadvertently be taking on some fractional responsibility for a debt exceeding our net worth. Likewise, governments don't like it when pension funds are bankrupted because of what they invested in.
      - calvinmorrison 3y ago
        Limited liability and other contraptions are just tools capital and feudalists use to avoid liability. In fact these should be reveresed. In fact most of these should be tried as RICO cases

BytesAndGears 3y ago

I’m more worried about the fact that it was allowed for so long. Sure, we’re doing the right thing by quitting PFAS and starting major cleanup efforts. But the system existed where people were incredibly negligent for years, knew they were hurting people, made boatloads of money, and retired. That same system exists in many oil-and-gas industries, drug marketing, and more. There are dozens of examples where this has happened in recent years, and that’s just the ones at large enough scale to be prosecuted. It’s still happening to this day. How do we start treating intentional negligence that leads to mass suffering and death as seriously as murder? It is individuals making these decisions, and they need to be held personally liable. The corporate veil is useful, and shouldn’t go away completely. But when an individual makes a decision that had a high probability of doing major harm, they should at least stop and raise the issue to a government agency, to limit their liability. If they do not take appropriate precautions, like getting explicit approval from government authorities, then they should be personally liable for the negligence.

Y_Y 3y ago
Is there a told-you-so list somewhere that catalogues these ongoing negligences? I'd love to see a comprehensive of the things that are known now, but not well-known yet.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  I suspect we're going to find plenty of food items to put on this list. Are we planning to jail or bankrupt the peddlers of sugar water? Sugar itself? Refined flour? Non-nutritive sweeteners? Fast food? Fast casual? Buffets? Potato chips? Chocolate? Beer? Wine? (Stop me when we get to some pseudo-vice that you sometimes enjoy.) At some point, I think you have to say "society decided at the time that selling Coke, Pepsi, fast food, potato chips, and wine was okay, and the people who sold that aren't subject to retroactive punishments for selling something that we pretty much knew was damaging to health of millions of people, but they chose to eat it anyway..."
Buttons840 3y ago
> But the system existed where people were incredibly negligent for years, knew they were hurting people, made boatloads of money, and retired.... It is individuals making these decisions, and they need to be held personally liable. Maybe people who have more than, say, 20 million dollars should be personally liable. This seems like a very conservative middle ground, because, as you say, these people have sometimes knowingly made decisions they knew would result in deaths. Taking away only some of their money is the least of punishments, and they would still be left rich and very comfortable. This should apply to almost anyone. I get that regular people deserve some protection from liability for just doing their job, but at some point society is paying you so much money that you owe us a little personal responsibility in return. Maybe it could be structured such that when a company is sued and loses, the company can then sue past employees who made the wrong decisions. Again, this liability would not be able to reduce an individual's wealth to less than 20 million, so employees don't have to worry about being completely ruined, but people shouldn't be able to control society warping amounts of wealth when the source of that wealth was incorrect and possibly corrupt decisions. Let's try including some responsibility with the merit.

VoodooJuJu 3y ago

We unfortunately see it far too often - corporate crimes that are punished with simple fines that become the cost of doing business. But we all know it's not justice. Justice would be criminal charges against the people within the corporation that actually did the crime. We're long overdue for some change here. Are there are any politicians or bills (past or present) that have floated the idea of exposing shareholder skin in the corporate game? If these people were threatened with serious prison time, capital punishment, or even worse - being forced to drive a used Kia the rest of their lives (materialists couldn't bear the shame), we'd see far less harm being done.

CJefferson 3y ago
Another option would be easier corporate death — all shares instantly voided. The government could decide what to do with the company, fold it, or sell it for scraps. Yes, there might be motivation for the government to “kill” companies for profits, but there is exactly the same (and proved many times!) issue with putting people in prison, so I don’t see why companies should get a special exception, they are “people” as well, or so I’m told.
- always2slow 3y ago
  I think you're on the right track here.. corporate death, shares voided, assets frozen in perpetuity, buildings, land, machinery. Everything frozen forever to stand as a warning to the next executive or employee before doing something like this.
  - anonymousab 3y ago
    You can even start with corporate jail. No business operations of any kind allowed for weeks/months, be that preforming services for clients, servicing debts, contracts or payroll. And if that results in an existential threat to the company or a lot of lawsuits for failing to perform their obligations, then that would be the just results of the company's decisions. It would be as existentially threatening and crippling to a company as it currently is to the average member of society.

23B1 3y ago

I wonder how many HN readers are complicit in this same style of abuse towards customer data.

aranchelk 3y ago
In my mind privacy breaches don't even live on the same planet as large scale long term environmental damage.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  But the same thinking leads to both. "Not my problem" or "just doing what the boss asked me to do, that must be OK" etc.
- 23B1 3y ago
  ...yet. And I'm not just talking about privacy breaches, I'm talking about conscious, willful abuse.

phkahler 3y ago

To all the comments wanting some kind of personal accountability or justice, let's just point out that the government won't even ban stuff like this quickly. Companies are given time to phase it out. Just making a hard ban effective immediately is seen as too harsh, yet it is the most obvious thing to do and you're asking for much more.

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mattmaroon 3y ago
That's also a function of lack of strong evidence of harm. We're not even sure that people exposed to high levels of PFAs are suffering harm, let alone the other 99% of us. There's no mesothelioma-level smoking gun here even for firefighters, factory workers, etc., let alone those of us who are only exposed to it via drinking water. It's a mass hysteria, and while I'm certainly not saying it's benign, I've read the studies, and they remind me of the nutritional ones from the 90's we've all since abandoned where they just throw a bunch of claims at the wall, show a bunch of weak correlations in completely uncontrolled studies, and say "more research is needed".
- forgetfreeman 3y ago
  Your comment also reminds me of the late 80s and early 90s when tobacco companies pumped massive amounts of cash into cancer research to muddy the water around the harms being caused by their products.
  - mattmaroon 3y ago
    Very different. The evidence was much stronger there. The correlations were so high as to be impossible to ignore. (It also helped that smoking was so prevalent across race/class/age etc that it practically controlled for all the other variables inherently, which is true of drinking water exposure to PFAs too.) There were conditions like emphysema that were basically unheard of in non-smokers (or people who worked in certain occupations that involved a lot of combustion byproducts) and common in smokers. The correlations here (at the levels most of us are exposed to) are incredibly weak. Don’t take my word for them, look them up. This is more like the link between aspartame and cancer. There’s no smoking gun, no high correlations. If you look up the symptoms “linked” to it, there are hundreds at least. Not all correlations are equal. But, I install R/O filters in my house because I am not certain it is not harmful and why take the chance? I’m just not certain it is harmful and I would need to be to support jailing people or banning the chemicals immediately and entirely.

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tejohnso 3y ago

Who were the top level executives while this was going on? Why don't these articles ever lay blame properly? And what are the consequences for those individuals? And what is being done to ensure it doesn't happen again?

superkuh 3y ago

I would like to see 3M forced to pay the DNR of Minnesota and Wisconsin a similar amount for making the St. Croix and Mississippi rivers polluted enough that we can't eat the fish again (like the 1980s/90s before the mercury settled out).

siliconc0w 3y ago

There is some evidence (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9228135/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9228135/) that PFAS causes trans-generational dysfunction. Even if we somehow get it out of our environment - which we will never do - the damage already done can stay with us indefinity. They not only poisoned several generations, they poisoned future ones as well. There is no amount of money that can be be paid here.

kurthr 3y ago
Having read the article it's really not clear this it supports that analysis, "As expected, environmentally relevant PFAS levels did not affect survival." In particular, although the high levels of exposure (of one or more PFOS/PFOA) showed effects, there was reverse correlation at low levels. Of course this is in Zebra fish so I'd hesitate to guess the relevance for mammal or human populations. It does seem to most directly affect lipid metabolism including steroids, and is multi-generational. I'd be most worried where the chemical (waste) byproducts were used as fire suppressants rather than the small quantities found elsewhere. Those concentrations (hundreds of ppt) are much more worrying. People who sprayed their clothes, couches, tires with scotchguard were probably also already exposed to 100s of times higher lifetime doses than they will ever see through environmental sources at <10ppt (still above proposed limits). https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/pfas_contamination/map/ https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/pfas_contamination/map/

ein0p 3y ago

I’m not even sure what a true “settlement” would look like in a case like this. Usually a settlement serves to at least partially repair the damage to the plaintiff. In this case the damage can’t be repaired at all. If there was a crime committed people need to go to jail in such cases. Unequal application of justice: someone steals a donut and ends up in jail, yet, another person person dumps tons of toxic sludge in a river and they get to “settle” using the money that’s not even their own.