 |
This pair should sound familiar. Industry lobbyists love the idea of individual responsibility. And so they will argue that individuals should be responsible for addressing a problem (paired with the 4 of Clubs or the 6 of Clubs). But in other contexts, accountability goes out the window. They need total immunity from lawsuits. |  |
Many technology companies have sought and obtained immunity for failure of anti-terrorism technologies. "'The unintended consequence of even a single failure in a well-intended system or device we might provide could result in significant legal exposure that could financially ruin a company,' Northrop Grumman president Ronald D. Sugar said in congressional testimony..." D. Ian Hopper, Tech Cos. Push Terror Legislation, Associated Press, Jul. 10, 2002. This argument could apply to any company making any product.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
Because they don't understand stuff. To wit, Mike Allen in The Politico:
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs surveillance of telephone calls and e-mail traffic of suspected terrorists, expires on Friday. After that, any monitoring that's currently authorized could continue,…
Watch for more of this kind of stuff as green prducts and technologies grow! And along the same vein, did anyone else note that Saudia Arabia brought up the idea of their being entitled to compensation for lost revenue in any kind of a global oil consumption control agreement? I think this came up…
Whenever we talk here about immunity from lawsuits for Big Pharma I hear a lot about so-called frivolous lawsuits. Those aren't the lawsuits that are clogging our court system since only about 10% of lawsuits are tort actions. But I'll concede one thing: there is such a thing as a frivolous lawsuit…
President Barack Obama has signed 23 Executive Orders intended to reduce gun violence in the United States. This alone will not be sufficient--Congress must pass new laws to address this problem as well, and the citizens of the united states have to make some cultural adjustments--but it is a…
On the other hand, light aircraft in the United States basically stopped production altogether for quite a while. They were being sued because of incidents in 40 year old aircraft. This industry lobbied Congress for a 20 year liability limit, and promised to start back up when this was done. They finally did get a 20 year limit, and have restarted production. Twenty year liabilty is plenty for many products.
Indefinite liability does seem warranted for the disposal of nuclear waste. I mean, the stuff is known to be lethal for hundreds of thousands of years.