Why are these people never charged with murder?

Great Debates
21

Tatjana: It is perfectly acceptable to refer to human lives in terms of dollars. See, it’s not that we put a dollar value on life, but that we only have a finite number of dollars to spend on safety, so dollars become the yardstick.

So, if you can say, “This safety feature will cost us $5 billion per life saved”, you have a a useful metric. Because if you’ve only got 5 billion, and another safety enhancement only costs 2.5 billion per life saved, you have a rational basis for choosing one over the other. And in the end, putting dollar values on lives allowed you to save an extra one.

It’s totally irrational to claim that you can’t put a dollar value on a life, and therefore companies are wrong for trying to do just that.

Or, let me put it another way: If you don’t attach dollars to lives, how would YOU decide whether or not to put in a titanium clasp for a seatbelt, vs say putting braided fuel lines under the hood, assuming that you can only afford to do one or the other?

The problem here is that while any one thing might represent a fairly small incremental cost, there may be hundreds or thousands of such things, and the company can’t afford to do all of them. THIS is the missing piece of the puzzle that people don’t seem to understand any more. If a Ford vehicle has a gas tank explosion, and some enterprising lawyer manages to turn up a document that shows that Ford knew the explosion could happen, knew it could prevent it with the addition of a $5 bracket, but chose not to, then Ford is TOAST. They’ll be sued and lose. And people will talk about how evil Ford was for doing that.

And they’ll never know that Ford used that $5 to implement another safety feature that saved twice as many lives. Or that they made the same decision on 200 other places on the vehicle. Or simply that they did it in order to keep the price of the vehicle low enough that they could sell it and still turn a profit. After all, the safest car in the world is useless unless someone can afford to buy it.

22

Come on, Sam, read what I wrote. I said, “The problem isn’t that they’re making those calculations, it’s how they determine the values placed on lives… The problem is this system tremendously undervalues lives.” Without tort liability, there would be no value placed on those lives. They would have no incentive to implement any safety measures whatsoever. So we have to protect the tort system and make it more fair to injured plaintiffs.

It’s hard to imagine an situation where the decision to exclude a $5 bracket that could save a life would be justified under a cost-benefit analysis. (Even if they sold millions of cars and only one person died, it still wouldn’t be justified.) But we could adjust the hypothetical to make it more reasonable (like if the bracket cost $500), so that’s not really important.

The thing is, we’re talking about a products liability case in torts, when the question is whether they should held criminally liable as well. Clearly the standards for each should be different, and we can argue about where to draw the line. The question is, if a corporation refuses to implement an inexpensive measure that they know will save lives, should they be charged with manslaughter? You would be. Why should they have immunity?

23

Tatjana: This may surprise you, but I largely agree. And I think tort law has a big part to play in protecting consumers. I would much prefer the controls on business to come through courts of law than through government regulation.

And sure, my $5 example was a bit of an exaggeration when it comes to cars, but not other products. Falls from ladders are one of the primary causes of accidental death and injury in the U.S. Ladders could be improved. But we’ve long since found all the really, really cheap ways to improve ladders. Once in a while an expensive ladder will come along that has some expensive safety improvements, but generally they don’t make it into the mainstream because the public is happy with the relative safety they get from the cheaper ones and won’t fork over the cash.

And tort law, if it goes overboard, can actually have a detrimental effect on safety. Modern light aircraft are a good example - they could be lots safer, and lots cheaper. But no one will build them, partially because of excessive regulation, and partially because the market isn’t big enough to warrant exposing a manufacturer to the new tort claims that inevitably arise.

I guess my main problem is not with tort law, but with the fact that the law gets applied very poorly in many cases, due to general ignorance of math and engineering on the part of the jury, the judge, and lawyers. I believe the tort system is flawed today because it hasn’t kept up with the highly technical nature of society. And I’m not the only one who thinks so - this is a fairly big area of study in legal philosophy these days.

24

I don’t know whether or not human life is undervalued by safety engineers working for corporations. Put another way, I don’t know whether our society is spending too little or too much on safety.

Food for thought though: Using 1989 data, if we were devote the entire gross national product of the US economy to eliminating all of the 94,500 accidental deaths -that is no money for health care, no money for education, food, housing, pinking shears or whatever- then that would involve spending about $55 million dollars per life saved. Of course there would still be millions of injuries and illnesses remaining. (Source: Kip Viscusi, 1992)

$5 Bracket: Assuming 5 seatbelts per car and 10 million vehicles sold, that works out to $5510 million= $250 million dollars per statistical life saved, given your standard. That’s too much, IMHO.

FWIW, my reading of the literature indicates that spending on safety should geared towards about $1-10 million per statistical life saved, based on the wage differentials that people in more hazardous industries receive, after attempts to control for other factors.

Fine. What’s the alternative? The choices are to leave it up to the market (which, IMHO would result in a lot more deaths), let the tort courts decide (status quo in the US) or allow for a more intrusive big government safety bureaucracy (as in Europe). Personally, I like the European approach, but I’m not sure whether that would fly in the US. (Hmm, I wonder what they do in Canada.)

Finally, I might add that according to governmental crash tests, new cars are a lot safer than they were, say, 20 years ago (largely due to airbags, as far as I can tell.) Another victory for Social Democratic Market Capitalism. :wink:

25

I was using different assumptions to gauge the reasonableness of this example, but that’s not really important because the question that was posed was different. Say the bracket cost $0.10 and would save 10,000 lives. Aren’t we moving into a range where the car company was so grossly negligent that they should be held criminally liable as well? We can argue about where the line should be drawn, but at some point aren’t their actions so morally repugnant that they deserve to be punished more than financially?

I agree with you. Safety standards would be better addressed through government regulation than the tort system. But unless we give those regulatory agencies some teeth, we are dependent on the tort system to hold companies accountable. I read that the government agencies that regulate safety standards are controlled by the car industry itself. That was one of the reasons why the Firestone fiasco came about. I don’t have that source handy though.

Haven’t studies shown that airbags have done more harm than good? (Maybe we should address this on another thread.)

26

Agreed, as far as I am concerned. But I’m not sure about the extent to which the executives of the companies that you cited actually crossed the line into criminal negligence.

(Let’s see, $5*.1*10 million=$5 million for 10,000 lives or $500 per statistical life. Sounds like criminal negligence or manslaughter to me.)

27

May I comment here?

There is a difference between cost saving decisions that go unnoticed as fatal until x amount of vehicles have been sold and those known to be so before same vehicles hit the road. In the latter, the vehicles were known to be potentially or actually dangerous prior to distribution and could have been reworked but, due to financial considerations, were not.

The are incidents where the cost of repair, delayed shipment penalties, increased payroll costs and loss of profit margin have been figured against the possibility of lawsuits from deaths incurred due to the defect. The cost of human deaths was cheaper. Along with this came the cost of image damage control, the discussions of delaying such lawsuits to force people to settle for much less, and acceptable out of court settlements against the over all mean profit.

If a CEO was not aware of the potential for deaths because of the omission of a $5 bracket, then he or she is in the clear. If he or she knew of the potential of possible deaths and approved the product, then he or she is responsible for negligent manslaughter at the most. If he or she knew that deaths were going to happen because of the omission and released the product, then he or she is responsible, IMHO, of murder.

The example of the Corvair previously given. Before the car was released the makers knew of it’s dangerous tendency to flip over and it’s poor performance but they launched an advertisement campaign showing it to be virtually a jeep as well as a car. I recall advertisements of it plowing through woods and tracts of sand effortlessly. Their own tests prior to releasing the car indicated that it would become unstable under various normal driving conditions.

Their decision to release it was criminal.

(Yes, yes, I know some of you had a Corvair, thought it the best car you ever owned, had no problem with it and so on, but a lot of people did. A friend of mine owned one and loved it, but he never drove it hard enough for the defects to show up.)

Deadly defects might not show up until after the product hits the streets and then the CEO’s have the option of doing a couple of things, like major recall or ignoring everything publicly while getting ready for damage control from lawsuits. Major food companies, after having been publicly stung several times, now promptly recall bad food as soon as they realize it is bad. They know that the expense of a human life is more than their lost profits and additional costs.

Back to Flagler.
He was warned by experts not to fill in the miles of shallow sea between some of the keys with track bed instead of more expensive bridges because of what it could do to the area. He decided to do it anyhow and the results were a tidal wave hit where none had hit before.

Even after the rail road was wiped out, and the corpses were being picked out of the debris of the towns destroyed, no criminal charges were considered and he was still considered a hero. He still is.

It is the knowing that the action of approving a product or action that is going to kill people and weighing the costs between liability and profits that is criminal. We’ve even had several medications rushed through approval to garnish greater profits, with the decision makers knowing that testing was incomplete, that the product contained dangerous side effects but considering the money more important than the inevitable lost lives.

Damage control has included further testing of the product, including studying effects or problems experienced by the buyers, getting ready to produce a new, improved, safer version once the feces hits the fan, along with funds ready to settle suits and stories rehearsed to deny culpability.

Now, such actions should be criminal, singled out to the decision makers, but instead, the charges are filed against the whole company, which pays the fines and chugs happily along, no worse for the wear.

The Tobacco industry is about the only major business so badly affected by legal action that it is close to closing down that I know of. Even so, the Prime Executives who knew of the dangers of nicotine and agreed to bamboozle the public, agreed to lying ad campaigns, agreed to hide research data and not make an effort to find ways to make the product safer, are not criminally charged.

See, it’s not just the possible problems by omitting a $5 bracket, but the absolute knowledge that by omitting same bracket X hundreds of people will die, and still releasing the car, figuring profits will still be high after lawsuits or the costs of deaths more viable than the cost of recall and repair.

28

The point here is that every single car out there has a $5 bracket missing (metaphorically). Every car out there could be made safer in hundreds of little ways, and every manufacter has the absolute knowledge that by omiting that bracket more people will die than otherwise. This is just how the world works–to do otherwise would make cars too expensive for anyone to bother with. We have the absolute knowledge that every car that goes faster than 5 miles an hour is going to kill more people than cars that only go 5 mph. So does that make everybody who makes cars liable? Your arguement needs a way to draw the line.
As far as cars being safer: they definitly are. The number of automobile deaths/year has remained at a steady 40,000 for like a half century. If you consider how many more cars are on the roads now than there were in the 50s, you see that that is a huge improvment.

29

Back to the OP subject: It’s not a question of absolute certainty or absolute ignorance of a risk, but the old “reasonable person” standard. That’s fuzzy and hard for a plaintiff to prove, in an organization where a large number of persons contribute to any significant decision in some way. Attempting prosecution of individuals is largely fruitless, and inevitably would allow some or most contributors off the hook, arguably arbitrarily. Actual intent to kill would almost never exist in the type of cases you’re referring to, and even reckless disregard would be difficult to demonstrate in court.

Besides, the victims and their families of such actions are at least as motivated by the desire for compensation as for retribution. Proving a corporate entity, rather than a few individuals, responsible is not only much more solidly based by any standard, but requires a less-stringent standard of proof. Corporations can be and sometimes have been found “guilty” of crimes and have been forced to pay criminal fines, however.

30

SuaSponte wrote:

Funny, I thought it was Firestone.

31

Sure. :wink:

Merely by selling a car, the CEO knows that deaths will happen. There is a fundamental tradeoff between safety and cost; ignoring the latter or pretending that a quick application of so-called common sense can resolve the issue is pure evasion. [sub]Which is not to imply that evasion is unusual in this context…[/sub]
Cars are getting safer
From the statistical abstract:


Age-adjusted Motor Vehicle Deaths
1980   1990    1993   1998
22.9   18.5    16.0   15.0

Apparently, age-adjusted deaths have dropped by a third since 1980, notwithstanding greater miles traveled and the fact that 1980 was a recession year (which tends to lower traffic fatalities, IIRC).

32

OK – Bridgestone or Firestone, whoever it was who shipped out thousands of tires known to be defective prior to or shortly after release and chose to keep quite about it.

Yes, cars are safer, but that is not the discussion here.
Yes, every CEO knows the risk no matter which car is approved.

All agreed to, but again not the main point. We’re getting too dispersed in mental masturbation here.

The CEO of a Major Car Company gets a report from his research and development department concerning a new car, all set to be released that month. Orders are in, contracts signed, shipping dates arranged, transports lined up and deposits banked.

The report informs him that they have discovered that the fuel tank is not as secure as they thought, that tests have shown that if hit in the rear, the car has a 60% chance of exploding into flames, far above the acceptable 5% standard. Reasons are explained, and it all boils down to needing a simple $5 bracket installed in a key place to prevent this.

The report goes to the finance department and they calculate that the $5 bracket will cost, in wages, because every worker is union, at least $7.80 to install because the worker gets $14 an hour and can do 5 cars an hour, but by the time they total up all of the costs for many workers to handle the cars at maximum productivity, the cost comes to a couple of million. This will decrease the already fixed profit picture from the cars, which have already been sold at a fixed price to dealers.

The CEO evaluates the lessor cost of a later recall, with the bracket shipped out to dealers to install, the accountants bring up shipping costs, dealer reimbursement charges, public relations costs, potential lawsuits sparked by the inevitable cranks willing to deliberately damage their cars and blame it on faulty workmanship and the loss in public confidence, plus stock prices, all equaling a drop in the yearly profit picture. The cost is high.

So, he weighs the cost to the company, verses the cost from lawsuits involving deaths directly related to the missing bracket. The company lawyers estimate the percentage of actual victims who will eventually sue, depending upon how long the defect can be kept from the news and the public. Accountants give percentages of potential monies which can be placed in legal accounts depending upon how long the responsibility of the company can be concealed, to later be used for settling suits.

The corporate lawyers estimate the inevitable federal fines coming out of federal action after lawsuits have started and the length of time between the first suit and the government getting involved. A section of the lawyers gears up to start their government lobbyists acquiring gifts to ‘give’ to select congressmen to influence them to minimize punitive damages by the government.

Other lawyers gear up to start either delaying individual lawsuits until the claimants settled for less or die off while still another section gets ready to handle and prolong the inevitable group suite with reasons why the damages should be minimized. A smaller section starts seeking a scapegoat.

The PR department draws up a contingency plan to start counteracting the inevitable damage which will happen once the news media gets hold of the story.

All of this prior to the CEO making the decision to release the deadly cars or recall them prior to shipment and fix them.

He decides to ship them, because the alternative will be too costly to the company and the legal actions can be dragged out for decades at much less cost, giving the company time to make major profits and store up funds to pay off suits.

Just good business.

In the end, 150 people die from the faulty gas tank and 25 more are seriously injured and scarred for life.

The CEO weighed the risks and by giving the order to ship the cars, signed the death warrants for X number of human beings.

Now, suing the Corporation is more satisfactory, but along with the company being sued, the CEO, or whoever hid the information from the CEO, committed murder for selfish reasons, having nothing to do with any form of hate or revenge. That person should be found and brought up on charges.

Now, do you get what I mean?

It has nothing to do with the impossibility of making a cost effective absolutely safe car, or else we’d be selling air conditioned, leather bucket seated, surround sound equipped army tanks. Those might survive in normal traffic.

It involves an obvious defect and the people who choose to hide or ignore it because of costs or even the possibility of loosing their jobs.

33

Cheese:
sigh. Maybe we agree; I can’t tell.

Said CEO figures out that defect will kill 150 people. Let’s skip the maiming part. And let’s say it’s an ordinary traffic death, not a fiery one.

Said CEO learns the total costs of fixing the defect.

IMHO:
Said total cost is greater than $2.3 billion (=150 lives*$15 million): Don’t fix it. It’s too expensive under Communism, Socialism, Capitalism, what-have-you.

Said total cost is, say, $75 million: Fix it. If the CEO doesn’t, the car company should be sued.

Said total cost is, say, $5 million: Fix it. If the CEO doesn’t, the car company should be sued and prosecutors should consider bringing the executives up on charges.

The point is that given limited resources, any decision maker will have to figure out a cut-off point whereupon safety equipment is installed or not installed. There is nothing inherantly wrong with the decision making process that you described, provided that the implicit value of the statistical life is not set too low.

34

Thanks for simplifying it, flowbark. That’s what I was trying to get at.

The problem is the value put on human life is too low. The only value the companies factor in is their probable tort liability. The tort system being what it is, this evitably works out to less than you or I would say a life is worth. Juries often try to compensate by awarding large damages in the cases that go to trial, but judges frequently overturn these verdicts. And now they’re trying to “reform” the system to benefit them (the corporations) even more.

35

I’m not sure whether or not the legal system values statistical lives too frugally. That’s an empirical question.

Taking an anecdote from the anti-trial lawyer side, drug companies have all but given up new contraception research. The price they can charge for an improved IUD (say) is too low to justify their increased liability exposure. [sub]BTW, wasn’t some nonprofit suppose to offer a version of the Today sponge last year?[/sub] OTOH, that state of affairs may merely reflect the fact that insurance companies will cover pharmaceuticals but not contraceptives, while court precedent would classify the latter as a medical liability claim. Not sure. :confused:

36

A small suggestion for a standard of criminal responsibility:

“Is this product markedly more dangerous than existing similar products?”

For example, if <whatever tire company> is aware that their tires blow out much more frequently than others aimed at the same market, then they are liable for any deaths caused by them.

That avoids the cost-of-a-life problem; existing products set a reasonable standard of safety, without complex (and speculative) financial calculations.

Of course we can argue about how much extra danger is ‘markedly more’.

37

The key word here is defect, which indicates that he knows that the product is flawed and will kill people. Whereas, any other ‘normal’ car he releases, he knows that people will find ways to get themselves killed in them or there will probably appear some unknown flaw or defect that no one suspected that will get them killed even faster.

The difference is he knows of an obvious lethal defect that he has the power to keep from reaching the public and save lives and chooses not to because of costs.

That is the difference. That very act of choosing money over lives makes him a criminal. Especially if he, like others have done before, does not announce a refit or recall after release until people get injured or killed because of the defect.

As for those tires, the company knew in advance that the tread would separate, but continued to sell them. Now, something like a recap will separate when treated too roughly, but you know that before you buy any. You then accept the risk. (I used to run recaps when I was young, because they were cheap, and never had any problem with them, but I checked them for signs of tread separation regularly.)

Does this make my point anymore clear?

38

That’s like the old “custom” standard for determining negligence, which is still used for medical malpractice. It would be very bad to use it too broadly. I don’t want the corporations deciding on their own what level of safety is OK. Especially in the case of car companies, which we keep using as our example. There are so few of them that they could easily get together and decide not to take certain safety measures

39

::cough Anti-trust! cough::

40

Then every single CEO of a car company (or a ladder company, or many many other companys) is guilty of murder.

EVERY SINGLE CAR HAS KNOWN DEFECTS

The question is just how much money per life saved is an acceptable number. In the illustratration by Sam Stone, for the price of $500 million dollars a year, car manufacturers could save 2 lives. they know, KNOW that if they do not spend that $500 million, 2 people will die who wouldn’t not have otherwise. By your standards, they are murderers. Does that seem right to you?