Thursday, January 29, 2009

“Uh Oh, Lawsuit Time”

The title of this post is the entire text posted by a frequent commenter to FortBendNow. I used it because it is particularly snarky and indicative of the incredibly insensitive nature of those of the far right – of which the commenter is a fine example.

The FortBendNow story, a story that is also making national news, is about the outbreak of Salmonella poisoning over the past 2 years, an outbreak that resulted in over 500 known poisoning cases (known, because who knows how many got sick and simply suffered through it for a day) and directly responsible for eight deaths.

The commenter dryly notes that all of these people, and I assume the surviving relatives of the eight who were killed, will probably want to make some dirty lucre over this by filing big ticket lawsuits against the corporations that caused the outbreak.

Possibly the commenter didn’t get it, or read past the part about how the Georgia-based peanut product food processor detected Salmonella in its own products, but sealed and distributed these tainted products anyway. At least I hope that is the case.

They did this for 2 reasons you know.

They did this because their actuaries probably did a statistical cost analysis and calculated that it would cost the company more to destroy the tainted lots than it would to settle all of the lawsuits that would be filed as a result of becoming sickened – or dying – from consumption of the products.

They did this because the federal agency that is supposed to be watching over these self-interested corporations, the Food and Drug Administration, an agency that is supposed to protecti American citizens from being harmed by their own country’s corporate entities, has been asleep at the wheel for the past eight years.

The pro-business anti-consumer Bush regime had a bad habit of having its watchdog groups simply look the other way when there was a violation of the law.

The end result is just this: there is no accountability any more. There is a complete absence of corporate responsibility today.

The attitude or lack of one, apparently shared by this right wing fanatic.

Should Peanut Corporation of America be sued by any and all persons who were sickened by the corporation’s callous disregard for the health of its customers.

Be sued by the survivors and heirs of the eight souls whose lives were ended with such indifference?

I’ll go this nimrod one better. Should there be state and federal criminal investigations launched to find, try, and punish those who made the decisions to release the tainted food that ended human life? Try them for the crime of murder?

Is the President black?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree that this company should be sued "back to the stone age."

How long will it take President Obama to restore the FDA to be able to protect us all from such outbreaks? Will it be 3 weeks? 3 months? 3 years?

elizabeth said...

We were having a conversation just last night about the horrible reputation that suing has gotten. It's a GOOD THING that allows people to self regulate, as most often these things are settled out of court. Fear of getting sued, and sued mightily, can keep a creep from being so creepy.
Thanks for writing this.

Anonymous said...

and of course, had nimrod's child been afflicted with salmonella, he so would not have ever considered filing a lawsuit. no, no, not him.

it's like greg abbott, texas AG. he had the misfortune to be sorely injured by a falling tree while out jogging one day. so he sued and won a big award - reported to be more than $10M over his lifetime. but since elected to AG, he's made it a mission to stymie plaintiff's lawyers and those idiots who look to the courts for redress of wrongs. Hypocrite is really too bland a word for him.

Anonymous said...

It's all done in the name of economic development. Even the judges who are supposed to protect the constitution are using this as an election slogan to protect the few large wealthy corporatist. Either you play ball or they come after you.

The character posting wouldn't happen to be our old "wadefishin" now would it (now posting as JohnBernardBooks well linked local crony-boy)???