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I don’t think it’s missing, I just think it’s seen as a liability, and American society has been known to absolutely obliterate people who are liable. Everyone

I don’t think it’s missing, I just think it’s seen as a liability, and American society has been known to absolutely obliterate people who are liable. Everyone thinks they have the right to judge, and use the massive amounts of available information to do so, even if they haven’t been trained to judge.

2ndorderthought 6mo ago
List the companies who received a fine worthy of the damage they caused in recent history. List the ones who didn't. It's not about judging. We are socializing the losses to the public and capitalizing the profits for the already wealthy.
- QuantumNomad_ 6mo ago
  We dont know the final amount, as they settled out of court, but in 1992 a woman was awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars by the judge after receiving third degree burns from a coffee at a McDonalds. She had originally asked for $20,000 to cover medical expenses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restau... If instead this happened in another part of the world instead of the USA, I doubt that McDonalds would have had to pay much if anything in a similar situation. And the point is that it seems that especially in the USA the companies are very avoidant of ever admitting fault for anything happening to their customers, for fear of lawsuits where they have to pay a lot of money to individual people.
  - Exoristos 6mo ago
    McDonald's revenue in 1992 was almost $5,000,000,000.[0] 0. https://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/24/business/mcdonald-s-net-up-11.html https://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/24/business/mcdonald-s-net-u...
    - QuantumNomad_ 6mo ago
      And yet even the $20,000 she initially asked for to cover health expenses was apparently too much according to McD execs.
      - array_key_first 5mo ago
        I think it's about sending a message, and maybe also about ego to a lesser extent. If you pay the 20,000 you're admitting you did something wrong. Of course they did do something wrong. They did something wrong thousands, probably millions of times. And they got very lucky to only be sued once. Which is why they paid millions.
  - pjc50 6mo ago
    This is such a litmus test, this case. Yes, America does weird things with punitive damages. But the injuries were really severe and the negligence significant. More often you get class action lawsuits where everyone involved gets mailed a cheque for $3. It's not just America. McDonald's UK got involved in the UK's biggest ever libel case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLibel_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLibel_case ; leaflets distributed in 1985 ended up resulting in a human rights judgement in 2005, after a lifetime of litigation and millions spent.
    - QuantumNomad_ 6mo ago
      > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLibel_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLibel_case Seems kind of an opposite situation. There it was McDonalds suing a pair of people, not the other way around. And the human rights violation was by the UK government and not McD.
  - 2ndorderthought 6mo ago
    When healthcare is free the amount of damages is harder to claim maybe?
    - rmunn 6mo ago
      If healthcare is free then you aren't paying your doctors. What you mean is "when healthcare is paid for by other people", and in that case the cost of the healthcare is still calculable.
      - QuantumNomad_ 6mo ago
        In socialist countries we have understood that it is better for the individual that everyone pays a share of what it costs to maintain a functioning healthcare system, and making it available to everyone for free.
        rmunn 6mo ago
        In capitalist countries, we do the same thing, except we allow people to choose whether to participate or not. (In theory, at least. The health insurance system in America is currently broken, for many reasons. A deep discussion of those reasons would almost immediately dive into ideological dispute, so I don't intend to do so.) Actually, I do want to mention one of those reasons, which I hope won't trigger any arguments. (Though if they do, I don't intend to engage). I mention this because I think it's interesting. A friend of mine is an emergency room doctor in a major US state. He mentioned to me once what he pays in malpractice insurance, and it was more than my annual salary as a programmer at the time (it was around 2010, and I've gotten a few raises since then). A LOT of the cost of healthcare in America is disappearing into the pockets of lawyers, more than most people realize.
  - account42 6mo ago
    Yes, McDonals paid one injured party out of many who may - whose injuries were not big enough or who did not have the time/money/energy for a lawsuit but whose combined damages could easily be more than hundreds of thousands.
- lkajsdfasdfdf 6mo ago
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2ndorderthought 6mo ago

List the companies who received a fine worthy of the damage they caused in recent history. List the ones who didn't. It's not about judging. We are socializing the losses to the public and capitalizing the profits for the already wealthy.

QuantumNomad_ 6mo ago
We dont know the final amount, as they settled out of court, but in 1992 a woman was awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars by the judge after receiving third degree burns from a coffee at a McDonalds. She had originally asked for $20,000 to cover medical expenses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restau... If instead this happened in another part of the world instead of the USA, I doubt that McDonalds would have had to pay much if anything in a similar situation. And the point is that it seems that especially in the USA the companies are very avoidant of ever admitting fault for anything happening to their customers, for fear of lawsuits where they have to pay a lot of money to individual people.
- Exoristos 6mo ago
  McDonald's revenue in 1992 was almost $5,000,000,000.[0] 0. https://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/24/business/mcdonald-s-net-up-11.html https://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/24/business/mcdonald-s-net-u...
  - QuantumNomad_ 6mo ago
    And yet even the $20,000 she initially asked for to cover health expenses was apparently too much according to McD execs.
    - array_key_first 5mo ago
      I think it's about sending a message, and maybe also about ego to a lesser extent. If you pay the 20,000 you're admitting you did something wrong. Of course they did do something wrong. They did something wrong thousands, probably millions of times. And they got very lucky to only be sued once. Which is why they paid millions.
- pjc50 6mo ago
  This is such a litmus test, this case. Yes, America does weird things with punitive damages. But the injuries were really severe and the negligence significant. More often you get class action lawsuits where everyone involved gets mailed a cheque for $3. It's not just America. McDonald's UK got involved in the UK's biggest ever libel case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLibel_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLibel_case ; leaflets distributed in 1985 ended up resulting in a human rights judgement in 2005, after a lifetime of litigation and millions spent.
  - QuantumNomad_ 6mo ago
    > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLibel_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLibel_case Seems kind of an opposite situation. There it was McDonalds suing a pair of people, not the other way around. And the human rights violation was by the UK government and not McD.
- 2ndorderthought 6mo ago
  When healthcare is free the amount of damages is harder to claim maybe?
  - rmunn 6mo ago
    If healthcare is free then you aren't paying your doctors. What you mean is "when healthcare is paid for by other people", and in that case the cost of the healthcare is still calculable.
    - QuantumNomad_ 6mo ago
      In socialist countries we have understood that it is better for the individual that everyone pays a share of what it costs to maintain a functioning healthcare system, and making it available to everyone for free.
      - rmunn 6mo ago
        In capitalist countries, we do the same thing, except we allow people to choose whether to participate or not. (In theory, at least. The health insurance system in America is currently broken, for many reasons. A deep discussion of those reasons would almost immediately dive into ideological dispute, so I don't intend to do so.) Actually, I do want to mention one of those reasons, which I hope won't trigger any arguments. (Though if they do, I don't intend to engage). I mention this because I think it's interesting. A friend of mine is an emergency room doctor in a major US state. He mentioned to me once what he pays in malpractice insurance, and it was more than my annual salary as a programmer at the time (it was around 2010, and I've gotten a few raises since then). A LOT of the cost of healthcare in America is disappearing into the pockets of lawyers, more than most people realize.
- account42 6mo ago
  Yes, McDonals paid one injured party out of many who may - whose injuries were not big enough or who did not have the time/money/energy for a lawsuit but whose combined damages could easily be more than hundreds of thousands.
lkajsdfasdfdf 6mo ago
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