Subj : Re: Um...no comment?
To   : Frank Reid
From : Angus McLeod
Date : Sat Sep 17 2005 11:22 pm

  Re: Re: Um...no comment?
  By: Frank Reid to Deuce on Sat Sep 17 2005 22:21:00

 > We need caps on these damages, and the entire cost of business will go down.
 > It shouldn't cost $5 for a Band-Aid in the emergency room!

There was once a pharmaceutical company whose name I won't mention, which 
was on the brink of receivership.  They had a great drug for treating Type 
II Diabetes (again, I won't mention the name of the drug), but 
unfortunately, it caused liver failure (requiring a transplant to avoid 
death) in entirely too many cases in clinical trials.  That company 
ignored the evidence of liver toxicity that arose out of the clinical 
trials.  They marketed the drug, because they knew that in two years they 
would make many billions of dollars.  Enough money to put the company back 
on sound financial footing, and leave enough over to pay off the lawsuits 
of the tens of thousands of people who suffered elevated liver enzymes and 
subsequent liver malfunction, frequently leading to death.

I am not making this up, I am talking about a REAL drug company and a REAL 
drug that was marketed for two years, then pulled from the market.  I am 
talking about REAL lawsuits going on even to this very day.

Now, how much do you limit the punitive damages to in that case?  Don't 
forget, these people EXPECTED to be paying offf a $10M here and a $43M 
there, and the occasional $330M class-action settlement to boot.  They 
factored the deaths and the subsequent payments into their BUSINESS PLAN!

I'll agree that lawsuits can result in ludicrous judgements for trivial 
matters.  But to legislate a cap is to give free license to those 
companies that feel the cap is within their budget.


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