[HN Gopher] Norfolk Southern is paying $6.5M to derailment victi...
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       Norfolk Southern is paying $6.5M to derailment victims,$7.5B for
       shareholders
        
       Author : gbenga4real
       Score  : 19 points
       Date   : 2023-02-23 20:24 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.cnn.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.cnn.com)
        
       | sokoloff wrote:
       | $6.5M from the company on top of "as much as $1.1 billion worth
       | of liability insurance coverage that it can draw upon to
       | compensate third parties for losses caused by the accident."
       | 
       | That seems like a buried lede to me.
        
         | toomuchtodo wrote:
         | Their liability insurance coverage might be insufficient to
         | remediate the environmental disaster their operating policies
         | contributed to, so they should be prevented from distributing
         | returns to shareholders until the full scope of cleanup costs
         | is determined. Otherwise, taxpayers could be footing the bill
         | while shareholders reap the gains.
         | 
         | When this occurs in bankruptcy, this is the concept of
         | "fraudulent conveyance."
        
           | donmcronald wrote:
           | They should have to put up a huge, long term, refundable bond
           | that can be drawn on to remediate environmental damage for
           | the next several decades.
           | 
           | There are 100+ year old gold mines in northern Canada that
           | are an environmental problem and the companies (and super
           | wealthy families) that benefited are long gone. We should
           | switch to a model that assumes the rich are externalizing
           | long term costs and collect money from them upfront to pay
           | for those costs.
        
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       (page generated 2023-02-23 23:01 UTC)