Richard Williams | December 14, 2020
Should we be fair to chemical manufacturers when they are sued? First of all, who are they? Since everything in the universe is made of up of chemicals, isn’t every manufacturer a chemical manufacturer. OK, no, it is only chemical manufacturers that make chemicals. Some are useful but hazardous, meaning they require special treatment. There are large ones like Bayer, but two-thirds of the 13,500 chemical plants are small.
If they are successfully sued, who actually loses? First, employees. The plant may have to reduce production or close down, which means employees get laid off. Lawsuits will affect the owners of the company’s stock some of whom are retirees on a pension.
We should pay attention because these types of lawsuits are growing. Perhaps because regulation moves so slowly, tort lawyers have found profitable opportunities by linking any chemical exposure to consumer or worker harm. The most widely known suit has been against Bayer, the owners of Roundup, that faced tens of thousands of claims claiming exposure to the herbicide caused non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Currently, the company has agreed to pay $10 billion to settle the claims.
Unlike federal agencies like the EPA, FDA, USDA and Department of Labor, law is applied unevenly “across different jurisdictions, different judges, and different jury pools.” The variation in how the law is applied to chemicals is so wide that there is even a website for “Judicial Hellholes.”
If you’ve ever seen an ad asking if you or a loved one has been exposed
to a chemical and you think it caused your ailment, it’s most likely
from trial lawyers who spend millions on advertising to recruit potential plaintiffs and influence juries..........To Read More....
No comments:
Post a Comment