I think that the article trying to imply a stronger link between apologies and the law than really exists in practice. Corporate apologies are not about trying

I think that the article trying to imply a stronger link between apologies and the law than really exists in practice. Corporate apologies are not about trying to win a lawsuit or reduce damages, they are about trying to regain trust and prevent or stem the loss of market share. The public are not so stupid as to be significantly swayed if the company apologises publicly for some problem and doesn't say what they are doing to address the problem. For example, if a companies widgets were exploding, the company might apologise and explain that they have fixed the exploding component, and instituted review processes to stop it happening again. Sometimes the change will not be sufficient to fix the problem, and the public may not have the background to realise this. The article claims safe apology "laws provide another way to protect wrongdoers from liability". But that is not really true - without the laws, companies in the wrong would not apologise at all, so there would be no more evidence against them. The laws allow companies to apologise without legally self-incriminating; the article takes a very law centric view, but I would think most people would value an apology even if it didn't incriminate the person making the apology - the apology (and particularly, the explanation of why it won't happen again) has value to the public outside of the legal system. Of course, the company apologising should still be able to be held liable if their explanation is untrue or misleading (for example, if the company says that the new version of their widget no longer explodes, but they are lying to get more sales, and it in fact does still explode, they should face an additional charge with big penalties for misleading or deceptive conduct in the course of trade, with the apology admissible as evidence).