IBM Cleared in San Jose Cancer Liability Suit 241
kbeech writes "A jury In San Jose returned a unanimous verdict in favor of IBM in a case where plaintiffs claimed the company kept medical information on their condition from them." Slashdot hasn't covered this well, but evidence in the lawsuit has suggested that employees were heavily exposed to chemicals and that IBM was aware that their employees got cancer at higher rates than the general population.
Conundrum (Score:5, Interesting)
While it seems like IBM may have had some knowledge of statistsically higher death rates among these workers, there is also the belief that I hold that every worker are responsible to find out what risks a certain job holds.
Employers and employees really are on equal ground more than the general media wants you to believe. Both parties gain a profit from the jobs performed. If an employee wants to perform a job at a certain income, why is it the employer's role to let them know of any risks beforehand, unless the employee explicitly requests a risk assessment?
Cancer is such an odd condition. I honestly believe cancer isn't directly caused by one simple situation. So many variables can go into it. Smoking may cause cancer, but I believe smoking doesn't -- it is only a risk factor. Did these employees all eat regularly at a certain facility? Did they all live near factories that may have also contributed to the enhanced risk?
I read all the articles, and I'm fairly sure I agree with the jury that IBM should not be held liable. On the other hand, if employees asked in advance about the risks involved, and IBM blatantly lied, then they should be held guilty.
One thing is clear: the lesson learned is that you should always ask your employer in advance of any health risks involved in future work, and get their reply in writing.
Convincing vs suggestive evidence (Score:5, Interesting)
The plaintiff's evidence was suggestive. The defendent's (IBM's) evidence was convincing.
Perhaps Slashdot was right to not cover this case very well.
Re:Conundrum (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What are acceptable levels? (Score:3, Interesting)
When an independent organization such as the UL tells someone that a product is bad, the free market is allowed to decide if they want to base their purchasing judgement on truly independent agencies.
When government enforces rules through coercion, companies can use the famous line "We followed the government's rules" and pass the buck.
In these situations, it is much more acceptable to pass the buck and just blame the rules rather than allow the free market to create independent agencies that can set various warnings for both employees and employers alike.
Re:What are acceptable levels? (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps someone can help me, as I don't remember one of the worst drugs from the 70s that was later determined to cause all sorts of problems.
In this case I don't find it very uplifting that a company can use the 'documented acceptable levels' argument to get out of their responsibility to those that work for them.
=(
Re:Conundrum (Score:3, Interesting)
In my opinion (as well as any AnCapper in general), Employers and Employees are equal. No one should force anyone to work, and no one should force anyone to employ. Employers offer a job, a salary, and a work condition. Employees can accept or deny it.
Your reasoning is really bad (Score:4, Interesting)
If I, as a company, in good faith comply with all known legal requirements, and take as many steps as possible for worker safety, should I be held liable years later when something turns out to have been bad for my workers?
Take micro waves. They weren't known to cause problems, and initially micro wave ovens showed up everywhere in convenience stores. Then, low and behold, pace makers were found to be affected. Now, before that finding, should anyone injured by this mechanism be able to sue and hold liable whomever was involved, no matter how tenuously, for an unknown side-effect? I say no. This case's verdict confirms this concept, and to me is a just verdict.
A counter example is the tabacco industry, which withheld information on the extent of the damaging properties of its products from the general populace while continuing to strongly market its products. This is malicious negligence (IANAL FYI) and to my sense of justice should carry a penalty. And look, they were penalized, and this is another example of justice being served.
Lastly, I don't think these verdicts are necessarily pro-business, or anti-business, but merely necessary verdicts to enable people and companies to do business in this country. If every injured party was able to reap big verdicts over every little "injustice" or injury, then our business climate would be so terrible that no company would stay in the US for fear of being sued out of existance for something they could not have foreseen.
Take asbestos for instance, there was a product that no one knew would cause the problems it did later. In my opinion, I think the verdicts have been too far reaching, even hitting companies that bought bankrupt companies for their equipment (wish I still had a link to that story, was on cnn about 4 or 5 months ago). That's too far imo.
Re:Conundrum (Score:3, Interesting)
In theory employers and employees are on equal ground. But in practice an employe has to put up with whatever the employer decides. Unless he's got the support of a union.
Age of defendents a factor? (Score:5, Interesting)
Now if there are a bunch of 20-30 year-old workers coming down with cancer, that might be pretty fishy.
Re:Conundrum (Score:3, Interesting)
Employees are not easy to replace. If a certain job has a lot of people willing to fill it (McDonald's), the pay scale will be LOW. That is because the Supply of workers is HIGH, the Demand for the job is LOW. HIGH SUPPLY + LOW DEMAND = LOW PRICE ("pay").
If your skills as a worker are in demand, your pay will be high.
How is this hard to understand? If you have bills to pay, those bills were incurred by your free will. If you are unskilled, you better be living at home and working hard to learn skills. If you gain skills, you can now gain additional higher bills.
Your post is fraudulent in assuming that people with high bills are unskilled. That is not my problem, or an employer's, if you take on big bills and don't have a skill to market to pay for them.
Re:I wonder... (Score:2, Interesting)
Personally, while the story concentrated on the victims, it had the opposite effect on me. I sided with IBM even while reading this story, despite the 1 or 2 lightly vieled attempts to paint IBM guilty by blatant assertions. (namely, IBM knew their workers had higher rates of cancer and other diseases). Just when, exactly, was IBM aware of this? It couldn't have been during the time in question, because they were just exposing their workers to these chemicals, so there was no history to make judgements by regarding safety.
Basically, this is just bad luck for the employees. If they'd won, you'd next be hearing about dead bungee jumpers' families suing bungee cord makers, because the victim misjudged the height vs length of the cord. (I'm sure this has already been attempted in our litiguous society that wants to blame anyone with deep pockets for their own stupidity)
Good Ole' OSHA (Score:2, Interesting)
OSHA hasn't been a properly functioning governmental organization for YEARS, if not decades.
Everyone should be aware that we take more than a paycheck [sweethoney.com] [lyrics] home from work.
Re:The US (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What are acceptable levels? (Score:4, Interesting)
You, as the consumer, may want to save money, so you go to some grey market import store and buy a non-UL certified lamp for 1/2 price. You take a risk that it could catch fire. Maybe your insurance company requires you buy only UL approved lamps. Your risk, your reward.
Let's move this thought to the free market of job offerings and acquisitions.
A company offers a job in building widgets. They know this job requires certain skills. They offer this job at a certain rate.
Employees seeking this job have these skills. Without OSHA, the possible Employees may have 2 or 3 or 300 or 1000 different companies seeking them. The Employees know how much they want to make. Some smart Employees will also want safe jobs, so they will seek Employees who are certified by trusted testing companies. Other Employees might want to take a risk (more dangerous job) in order to get a higher reward (more pay). They may decide to work at a non-certified company.
If you can make $50,000 with your skills from a "UL"-certified safe company, or $75,000 at an uncertified company, you can equate this with buying a $10 certified bulb, or a $2 uncertified bulb.
Re:Conundrum (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I've found that employers are much easier to replace than employees. It takes 6-9 months to replace an employee, and that takes a LOT of time. In addition, they usually aren't up to full capacity for about 3 months, and in the first month they usually slow your operations down.
There are some jobs that aren't as hard to replace, but rarely in technology.
"But in practice an employe has to put up with whatever the employer decides. Unless he's got the support of a union."
Or decides to go into business for himself. Or decides to work for a more ethical company. Or decides to create a union.
Re:Conundrum (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't quote to me about the poor people. I don't see them. I've spent times at soup kitchens, and those poor people have mental problems, so I offer my help.
Most "poor people" by your standard are too lazy to go out and learn a skill. You can get by on McDonald's pay. After working at McDonald's for a year, you're making $9+ an hour. Get any job and prove your worth, and you won't be poor.
Re:Finally a win for the good guys! (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.acponline.org/journals/ecp/novdec00/
Catch 22 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I'm turning Democratic (Score:3, Interesting)
Frankly, I wouldn't want to live in a USA without OSHA. Yes, they are overzealous at times but when it comes to life and livelyhood, employers often don't give a shit on basic safety and otherwise there's nothing the employees can do. There's not much a "free" market can do.
Re:industrial solvents DO cause disease (Score:1, Interesting)
As an actual chemist, I would be delighted if you were to site a source of your information.
Re:I'm turning Democratic (Score:3, Interesting)
To a certain degree, I agree with that; I'm much the same way -- I take a very active role in maintaining my own happiness; and, yes, I am quite satisfied with my life. *grin* I also realize that I'm lucky, though. I was born healthy, I'm relatively good-looking[1], I have a good job, and I'm looking at having an MBA, as well as being fluent in two foreign languages, in about three years. I don't need or want any help.
I find it interesting to see how widely diversified folks' perspectives are on this issue. Maybe it's because I'm somewhat accustomed to the feeling of working without a net...
Do you really work without a net, though? Would you be okay if you got slapped with a million-dollar RIAA lawsuit? Would you not ask society, in the form of police and EMTs, to assist you if you were shot? Would you let your house burn rather than call firemen? Do you refuse to drive upon the roads that others have helped to provide you with?
At some level, we depend on society -- after all, we're technologically advanced pack animals. All of us have a safety net of sorts that we rely on either explicitly (roads) or implicitly (knowing that EMTs will help me if I get in an auto accident without asking for a credit card first); all I advocate is raising that net a little bit.
And I do mean a little bit. How?
Welfare is screwed. Giving money to people who have demonstrated a lack of ability to manage it is nuts. Providing said people with basic needs like shelter, food, medical care, clothing, education, and simple public transit is humanitarianism. Besides, it provides a very basic incentive to get off of 'welfare' -- if you want anything that requires money, from a movie to a cup of coffee at Starbucks, you still have to work.
Think about how cheap a national healthcare system would be (cheaper than HMOs), coupled with a national network of homeless shelters, from which the state could draw workers for public projects -- keeping streets clean and such. We'd spend just as much money as we do now, but we'd eliminate homelessness, reduce disease, and have cleaner cities.
Ok, I'm done. I'll shut up now. *grin*
[1] This does help with job interviews; research has shown that a more attractive candidate, whether male or female, is more likely to get picked over a less attractive candidate.
Well it kind of depends (Score:3, Interesting)
One situation, which I suspect is what happened here from what I've read, is if they provide the necessary saftey gear and procedures and you ignore them. This sort of thing happens all the time. Donning safety gear is a pain and time consuming, as is getting necessary equipment. So you ignore it.
Like at my last job, we needed to move some Cisco 7513 routers to a palette to be taken away. According to OSHA regs, they were too heavy for a person to lug around, we should have gotten a tool to help us. That would take too much time, we just lifted them by hand. Well, had we injured ourselves, the university would have paid workmans comp and medical bills as required. However if we sued, we'd probably get nothing since we weren't following proper procedure.
I have a feeling that the employees either knew the risks, or didn't take the time to review the safety material provided to them and chose to not use proper saftey gear. Then they decided that the normal comp wasn't enough and sued. Jury disagreed since they were the ones not doing as they should.
I don't know this for a fact, however.
Re:Conundrum (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not saying that IBM is guilty (and I hope they're not - they are on on side after all (linux)).
But, the Radium Dial Co. delibertly told their workers that the "paint" they were using for the instrument dials was completely harmless, regardless of its constant glow. These people used to put it in their mouths, on their face, etc. and then turn out the lights and have fun after hours with it.
Radium Dial Co. changed their name and moved when too many workers started to get sick. The location where the building was (I think it was Chicago) still registers as radioactive with a giger counter. And this is something like 50-60 years later.
Isn't the history channel fun? =)
Re:It seems harsh (Score:1, Interesting)
Whatever makes you think that everyone has a right to compensation when "bad things" happen? For there to be compensation, there must be fault. Unfortunately, the American legal system is littered with examples of juries finding blame where none exists [nonfamous.com], because they think that someone "ought" to be compensated. And we as a society pay, in increased costs, restricted services, and restricted freedom.
Lawyers are largely to blame for this problem. There are some classic examples from this very case, as highlighted on overlawyered.com [overlawyered.com]:
Re:It seems harsh (Score:5, Interesting)
I wrote:
It seems harsh if they were exposed with the company knowing about it, that they were denied some compensation for that
Note the emboldened bit that you conveniently removed and replaced with ellipsis, to completely change the sense of what I said. The point was that IBM allegedly knew the effects of the chemicals on the workers, but let them work in those conditions anyway.
Later I said if they were found against, you have to assume that they couldn't prove it and I always think it's easy to make a snap judgement based on your feelings for the parties involved though - In other words, the court had the full facts, and it's dangerous for outsiders to make emotional decisions without being in possession of those facts.
Jeez.
Simon