Subject:
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Re: Art Debate Was: [Re: Swearing?]
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 19 Jan 2000 00:37:24 GMT
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Viewed:
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2325 times
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<3884AEDA.9C6DA48F@eclipse.net> <FoJnnJ.2xu@lugnet.com>
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James Brown wrote:
>
> In the interests of not repeating myself:
> http://www.lugnet.com/off-topic/debate/?n=3742
OK, in that note you say:
-- How do you hold a company's officers liable? If company X spills
toxic goo
-- into a river, who is responsible? The worker who didn't close the
valve?
Maybe. If he was negligent, yes.
-- The supervisor who didn't make sure it got closed?
And who didn't make sure the worker was trained. Maybe. Yes.
-- The process engineer who put the valve near the river?
Only if such behavior was negligent by the standards of the profession
and common sense.
-- The mechanical engineer for not designing a valve with a safety shutoff?
Probably not. The valve was designed to certain specifications and I
think you'd have an extremely difficult time supporting the idea that
this person was in any way liable.
-- The safety officer for not having an alarm in place?
Yes.
-- The PR person for not issuing a pulic warning soon enough?
Possibly.
-- This is an example of why I don't think personal liability is a sufficient
-- check. In any large organisation it is very difficult, bordering on
-- impossible in some cases, to track down who exactly is responsible
for any
-- given event.
Well, a system can only do so well. It would do as good a job as
possible and sometimes justice would slip through the cracks. As with
any system. What is a sufficient check?
-- > That waste management facility should have the pants sued off it, and
-- > management should be hung out to dry (if it really is true that they
-- > have irresponsibly allowed leaks to occur, which they probably have).
-- I believe it did/is. But as above, how do you determine that
management is
-- to blame? They're several layers removed from the source, and
certainly not
-- directly responsible.
It is management's role in a company to coordinate details. Apparently
some details were let slip and bad things happened. These people need
to take dropping the ball seriously when lives are at stake. It seems
weird to me taht you wouldn't want to incent that. Or is it just that
you want regulation in place too?
---back to the current note---
> Also, I don't think individuals have (in the general case) enough resources
> for personal liability to be feasable/sufficient.
The point of personal liability is not so much to make things right with
the victims, because there is no amount of money to make up for killing
your employees, but to make it _personally_ so scary to let employees,
or customers, or the public at large be damaged by the actions of your
responsibility, that it won't happen any more.
> An example of this occured
> recently in Alberta - a number of people were infected with Hepatitis C from
> improperly screened blood. With the people involved getting (IMHO) a
> reasonable settlement, the sheer number of people made the settlement HUGE
> ( 1.1B) - well beyond the means of the vast majority of company officers/gov't
> officials.
Right, hit the persons responsible for all they have and leave them in
eternal debt, and get the rest from the organization. The victims still
get their settlement and the perps are punished severely.
Chris
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Art Debate Was: [Re: Swearing?]
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| (...) <snipped example - I could counter it, but that would lead to wheel-spinning> (...) Hmm. That's not quite what I was getting at - I'm in favor of personal responsibility and liability, in a general sense. However, in a large organization, I (...) (25 years ago, 19-Jan-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Art Debate Was: [Re: Swearing?]
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| (...) Using a country in the middle of ethnic cleansing as a comparison is hardly flattering. You can get shot in any country, but it's more likely to happen if you live in the US than say the UK. (...) I find it easy to believe, however I would (...) (25 years ago, 11-Jan-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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