[HN Gopher] Three companies agree to pay $1B to settle 'forever ...
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Three companies agree to pay $1B to settle 'forever chemical'
claims
Author : gmays
Score : 119 points
Date : 2023-06-05 14:45 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnn.com)
| rieg3c wrote:
| i'm reading these are used everywhere, pretty much like plastics
| :(
|
| i really think this problem is out of our hands, i wonder how
| much time we have until the food and water has so much plastic
| and forever chemicals that it isn't safe to eat anymore
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| Seems kinda low given the scope and bets that amount a) gets
| substantially reduced later on and b) will be claimed as business
| expense so will have a even lesser net effect. Its just minor
| inconvenience for them.
| notRobot wrote:
| $1B combined, not individually
|
| > _The three companies said they have agreed to contribute a
| total of $1.185 billion to a settlement fund. Chemours will
| contribute 50 percent (about $592 million), and DuPont and
| Corteva will together contribute the remaining 50 percent, at
| about $400 million and $193 million, respectively._
| EscapeFromNY wrote:
| https://www.dupont.com/news/dupont-reports-fourth-quarter-an...
|
| Look at these numbers, extrapolate them to the decades they've
| been in business, and then compare them to DuPont's payment here
| of $400 million. The numbers aren't even close.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Just the cost of doing business. They paid pennies on the dollar
| for the damage they inflicted and they will do it again next time
| it suits them.
| [deleted]
| ProAm wrote:
| This is not enough of a penalty.
| cgb223 wrote:
| I mean it's great they're paying a fine, but are they going to
| you know, develop anything that will pull these forever chemicals
| out of the water?
| [deleted]
| intelVISA wrote:
| Don't be silly, have you even thought of the stakeholders?
| stodor89 wrote:
| Another day, another slap on the wrist.
| [deleted]
| Zetice wrote:
| When a payout like this occurs, does it mean the problem is
| resolved? In other words, are these companies no longer putting
| out toxic chemicals, or are they buying the ability to continue
| to do that without fear of further lawsuits?
| [deleted]
| pluc wrote:
| > In a statement, Dupont said it "has never manufactured PFOA
| or PFOS." CNN has reached out to the other companies for
| comment on the allegations, which they denied in a press
| release Friday.
|
| How can they stop something they never did
| rebolek wrote:
| you forgot /s
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I don't understand that statement. It seems to be an outright
| lie, or quoted out of context; not sure which, and both are
| plausible.
|
| https://www.dupont.com/position-statements/pfoa.html says
| "While we no longer make PFOA..."
| paxys wrote:
| The settlement likely includes a provision for them not
| having to admit to any wrongdoing, so they can legally lie
| in their press release.
| tedunangst wrote:
| DuPont has a complicated corporate history. Chemours, one
| of the other companies in the settlement, is the division
| that made Teflon. Corteva was also part of DuPont (and
| Dow). It may be technically true that none of the business
| units currently in DuPont made anything bad.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Three possibilities (other than just inconsistent
| statements).
|
| The "we no longer" could be referring to "the US" as "we",
| since they talk about the FDA outlawing it. So DuPont never
| made PFOA.
|
| "Manufacture" might be used in the chemical industry only
| refer to creating products. And DuPont was earlier in the
| supply chain.
|
| Or, even more upstream, DuPont may have made precursor
| chemicals that other people mixed into the final PFOA.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| I am aware that companies sometimes settle cases where they
| are in the right in order to avoid legal fees, but the idea
| that Dupont paid $400M in this settlement despite having not
| manufactured the chemicals in question is absurd.
|
| If they thought they weren't liable then they would have
| fought this in court.
| moi2388 wrote:
| DuPont is lying. They 100% did produce these materials. We
| have a factory on my place from which they dump this in the
| river.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Maybi ask what type of factory, are there no regulations?
| EscapeFromNY wrote:
| I can think of plenty of ways that sentence might be
| weaselly.
|
| Maybe they "synthesized" them, not "manufactured"
|
| Maybe they bought them from some other company (which they
| might happen to own)
|
| Maybe they manufactured PFAs in general, but not the specific
| chemicals PFOA or PFOS (it's an awfully specific statement,
| after all)
| plagiarist wrote:
| Yeah I immediately just assumed they manufactured them
| "through" a "subsidiary." Like how you can manufacture
| carcinogenic talcum powder and not pay your victims much of
| anything.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| I think it will likely be this - I'm already seeing all
| sorts of companies pivot to marketing "PFOA" free teflon
| alternatives (Starflon was the one that popped up last).
|
| I suspect that just like the whole BPA in plastic thing -
| the "___ free" alternatives will not be any better.
|
| They will just be sidestepping the very precise legal
| definition of the chemical that got them in trouble.
| TylerE wrote:
| Either that or it will be like gluten-free, and you'll
| start seeing it slathered all over stuff that never had
| it in the first place. Like, no duh non-flavored
| sparkling water is gluten free! (Actual example I saw in
| the grocery store today)
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Not as silly as it sounds.
|
| If you've got celiac, you may want to avoid sparkling
| water made in a plant that also bottles wheat beers.
| Gluten free refers not only to the ingredients, but to
| the manufacturing facility.
|
| https://celiac.org/main/wp-
| content/uploads/2017/07/Combined-..., point #6.
|
| > "The gluten-free label represents that the procedures
| put in place to prevent cross-contact with gluten meet
| FDA standards."
| lesuorac wrote:
| Well something like Soy Sauce often has gluten in it and
| I'd say judging by the name it doesn't.
|
| So something that seems like it'd trivially not contain X
| may actually have X.
| laputan_machine wrote:
| Then there would be no evidence, which would mean the court
| case would be thrown out / one-sided. Instead they settled
| for a large amount of money. Does that not make you raise
| your eyebrows?
| [deleted]
| rqtwteye wrote:
| The problem has been "resolved" in the sense that the companies
| and government don't have to deal with it anymore. That's the
| goal.
| agilob wrote:
| I'll pay you $1B to shut up
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| I take it. Should I send you my bank details?
| wiz21c wrote:
| For that price I can even clean the dishes if you will,
| say, for a year or two.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Isn't $1B a trivial amount for environmental damage?
| JohnFen wrote:
| Yes, it's meaningless.
|
| Once again, these huge corporations are destroying the world
| for profit and getting away with it.
| Sunspark wrote:
| Yes. It's an absolute steal of a price to pay for something
| that persists in the environment. It seems like a big number to
| people who live off a paycheck but if you compare it to a
| project like a section of highway construction or an airport or
| whatever you quickly see that this is no penalty. Put another
| way, an NBA basketball franchise is worth 2.86 billion on
| average. The penalty is basically 1/3rd of a pro level
| basketball franchise.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| This is only to cover damage to the drinking water (and
| excludes any drinking water supplied by state or federal
| governments). More lawsuits or settlements can concern
| themselves with damage to the environment.
|
| As for if that is a trivial amount for what they are paying
| for, I don't know.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| They made more than $1B and caused more than $1B in damages. This
| is a slap on the wrist.
| CommanderData wrote:
| Pocket change.
|
| This is not accountability for infecting the worlds population
| with these nasty chemicals.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| PFAS technology was top secret WW2 research output. Then the
| military discovered that they had amazing properties to fight
| extremely dangerous fires in missile warehouses and were
| eventually required to use them to maximize safety decades ago.
|
| Prozac, Lipitor, Flonase and about 30% of upcoming new
| pharmaceutical drugs are PFAS, so they aren't going away
| completely, because society has determined that they are
| valuable even if they can reach toxic levels if not disposed of
| properly (every chemical is toxic after a certain human
| concentration, including water).
|
| Companies wouldn't be able to manufacture semiconductors
| without PFAS as well, or high temperature components for
| warfare.
|
| Now that we are smarter, we know how to mitigate risk and
| reduce concentrating materials to keep below relevant ppb
| thresholds.
|
| If America isn't educationally sophisticated enough to handle
| this manufacturing and risk, it will just be done in zero
| regulation geographies like China and the world will be worse
| off.
| bluedays wrote:
| PFAS is not used in pharmaceutical drugs.
| nate_meurer wrote:
| They absolutely are. My favorite antidepressant fluoxetine
| (Prozac) is unambiguously a PFAS.
| ok_computer wrote:
| They listed prozac that is fluorinated
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoxetine
|
| But I'm unsure the line where perfluoralkylated is reached.
| I'd think if the compound had alkylated chains instead of a
| fluorine-linked head group.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > because society has determined that they are valuable even
| if they can reach toxic levels if not disposed of properly
|
| Society never decided this one way or another. Rich and
| powerful corporations did.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| What about we first find out how much of it is actually toxic
| (which seems rather 1/1000th of current official numbers) and
| _then_ start using them in processes which actually respects
| that? It still doesn 't cover _accumulation_ in bodies over
| time though.
|
| You don't gain any longterm competitive advantage by
| poisoning half of your population, giving them wonderful
| cancers, infertility, massive amount of birth defects etc.
| You just destroy society and bankrupt medical insurance.
|
| This isn't some economics and plying with abstract numbers,
| these are people out there and messing this up badly will
| have massive negative impacts for many generations.
| sledgehammers wrote:
| The leadership should go to jail. The fine should be 100x.
| Agingcoder wrote:
| If they agree then it's not expensive enough.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| The cost for anything like this should always be the cost of
| cleaning up the entire mess it created and compensating the
| humans harmed by it and covering their lifetime medical bills.
| $1billion sounds a tad low for doing any of that given the world
| wide impact. Its a bad deal.
| wmeredith wrote:
| Justice served would be jail time for execs or a corporate
| death penalty. Levying a fine means it's just a cost of doing
| business. And a billion dollars sounds like a lot, but it's a
| drop in the bucket for these massive multinational corporations
| that have been in business for decades.
| politician wrote:
| > a corporate death penalty
|
| So, no more Kevlar for police protection? The problem with
| the idea of a corporate death penalty is that it would
| shutter the corporation, shock the supply chain for critical
| materials, terminate the employment of thousands of people,
| and devastate their communities (e.g. because employees have
| families and those families consume food and stuff from the
| local economy which, in turn, supports other families).
|
| It's obvious why we haven't adopted it as a viable
| punishment.
| phkahler wrote:
| Nah, the assets would be auctioned off. The shareholders
| would be screwed. But the employees would largely stick
| around and do stuff under new ownership. It would still be
| a shock, but after a few of these you'd see investors not
| willing to allow that kind of thing to happen because it's
| a huge financial risk to them. Not a great solution, but
| also not as ruinous as you might think. Companies shouldn't
| be "too big to fail" and most aren't.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| There are tons of Kevlar alternatives, on cca same level of
| performance these days. Just because some company made a
| good product once or twice will make them invincible
| against the law with all the rest they ever did?
|
| You forgot 'think about the children' part, but in this
| case, it actually goes against that fucked up corporations.
| We may have to see half of our kids infertile in a decade
| or two and shitload of birth defects that can bankrupt any
| health services (in case of US rather half of population),
| no amount of thinking about Kevlar or Goretex (for which
| there are tons of great alternatives too and I stopped
| using their stuff in mountains long time ago) is going to
| fix that
| JohnFen wrote:
| > It's obvious why we haven't adopted it as a viable
| punishment.
|
| But we did. It used to be a tool that was implemented when
| a corporation behaved egregiously badly. At some point,
| though, we stopped (I think it was in the 40s, but I'm not
| sure).
|
| We really, really need to bring it back. There is no other
| way to hold them in check.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Chapter 11 bankruptcies allow corporations to continue
| operating. They just hose the investors.
| politician wrote:
| The shareholders aren't the ones manufacturing the PFAS.
| I think that I want the operating unit to be halted and
| dismantled. Not the shareholders, management, or other
| units. So, I don't think Chapter 11 is the right
| solution.
| alistairSH wrote:
| I think Chapter 11 was just meant as an example of a
| "closed" company continuing to operate. No reason we
| can't dismantle Dupont in a similar fashion.
| briantakita wrote:
| Will it solve the problem though? Assets & IP would be
| auctioned off. Shell companies would be formed to handle
| liability. The problem lies with the people who made the
| decisions that led to the toxic materials being
| discharged into the environment & the people harmed.
|
| A Chapter 11 would allow the same staff who caused the
| problems to join the new companies. Unless the people who
| caused the problems are personally & criminally held
| liable, nothing would change.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > The shareholders aren't the ones manufacturing the
| PFAS.
|
| True. They're just bankrolling it. I think it's totally
| fair to hold them responsible as well. Perhaps it would
| make investors pay more attention to what they're really
| supporting with their investment money.
| [deleted]
| briantakita wrote:
| Perhaps the death penalty for the execs would cause some real
| reform. Japanese culture had the concept to Seppuku when
| someone brought shame to their position. They seem to take
| their jobs seriously.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Yeah, it's a "make the victims feel like they got some justice"
| money but not anywhere near enough to actually solve the
| problem or to repay the damages.
|
| They're basically getting off scott free, and they made tens of
| billions of dollars in profit for only having to pay 1 billion
| in damages.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Back when I was 19 and an anarchist, I was always critical of
| LLC laws. I probably still am.
|
| I believe the judicial system does do the fine as you
| mentioned, but the prosecutors have to be realistic and settle
| out of court at the risk a skeptical judge/jury.
|
| Without LLC laws, you could go after personal ownership too.
| Privately owned company means there is a few billionaires to
| have their wealth confiscated. Publicly, our 401ks empty + risk
| of losing our homes.
|
| Isn't that insane to think about? What would a world look like
| if that was the case. Would companies be incredibly
| responsible? Would investors be incredibly responsible?
|
| I don't claim to say this is the best economic system, but it
| might solve our climate crisis by forcing people to be liable
| for themselves and what they own.
| lesuorac wrote:
| I'm not sure that the LLC laws are exactly the problem.
|
| I think it's the fact that you can get a company incorporated
| to do pretty much a vague _anything_ is the problem. There
| should be an ounce of thought by the State as to if what the
| person wants a company for is actually useful for society
| before granting them immunity.
|
| The second major issue is that the State is never willing to
| dissolve a company once it reaches some size no matter how
| much wrong doing it does. Like Walls Fargo willfully creating
| fake accounts to charge consumers money should've just be an
| instant disqualification for a banking license.
| bdowling wrote:
| First, a corporation can't do anything that an individual
| can't do.
|
| Second, incorporation does not protect the business, it
| protects investors. Without it, investors would be general
| partners and would be personally liable for anything the
| business does, including all debts and torts, even if they
| had no active role in running the business.
|
| Third, where owners of a corporation or LLC do participate
| in running a business, they often can be held personally
| liable for the debts and torts of the business. This is
| called "piercing the corporate veil" and happens all the
| time in lawsuits against small businesses.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > investors would be general partners and would be
| personally liable for anything the business does,
| including all debts and torts, even if they had no active
| role in running the business.
|
| I think it would be a better world if investors _were_
| held responsible for the wrongdoings of the businesses
| they finance.
| lesuorac wrote:
| > First, a corporation can't do anything that an
| individual can't do.
|
| The problem is not that a corporation can do something
| that an individual can't. It's that you can't punish a
| corporation the same way you can an individual.
| Corporations cannot sit in a jail cell.
|
| > Second, incorporation does not protect the business
|
| Your Third point kinda disproves this. You have to
| "pierce the corporate veil" in order to hold individuals
| of the LLC liable and this is generally w.r.t. an LLC
| commingling its funds with the owners funds. Not to do
| with an Owner doing an undesirable/illegal act (say
| fraud).
|
| > Third, ... happens all the time in lawsuits against
| small businesses.
|
| I'm not really sure any of these points counter-act
| anything I wrote. I explicitly called out Wells Fargo and
| you responded that small business routinely get attacked.
| Wells Fargo is not a small business.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I wonder if we could have fractional death penalty. Some
| lifetime counter on your responsibility of deaths by
| companies you own. When certain threshold let's say 0.5 is
| reached, it will be carried out when ever you are
| apprehended.
| mindslight wrote:
| Individuals and small businesses generally don't get great
| protection from LLC/incorporation and they get along just
| fine (when the owners are directly involved in running the
| business, it becomes much easier to pierce the veil).
|
| IMO, what really needs to be reigned in is this blanket
| extension of natural/individual rights to synthetic entities
| that receive limited liability protection. That government-
| granted charter with limited liability means that they're not
| _merely_ groups of people exercising individual rights
| collectively, as the supreme council has decreed.
| stcroixx wrote:
| They are not absolved of their remediation responsibilities,
| which are separate from these claims.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| Agreed. Most of the money probably doesn't even go to the
| people who got damaged.
| [deleted]
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