This is not simply a negligent corporation; this is a predatory, sociopathic, criminal, corporation.
Kathleen Wells:And so their conduct is intentional, you are saying? When you say it's criminal, is it criminal negligence, you would say?
Mike Papantonio:Here's the issue: Sometimes conduct is so reckless that we say we are going to treat them outside the analysis of negligence. A drunk driver has a blood alcohol level three times the legal limit. They drive through a school zone, and they kill a child. That is not intentional. They didn't intend to kill the child. But their conduct is so wanton that they fall within the criminal realm.
At the very least, we have that. But the question is: Do we have something beyond that? Do we have an intentional design, where the design was: We are going to de-regulate, we are going to take control over the regulatory body that's suppose to be the brakes, that's suppose to stop us when we get out of hand? Do we have such control over that agency where it is a meaningless agency? And do we have a design to gain that control?
Kathleen Wells:When you characterize a company as reckless/criminal, who are the players that would be carted off to prison? Would it be the CEO?
Mike Papantonio:You would take them off to prison for reckless, wanton conduct that approaches manslaughter. In most countries you would do that. In the United States, we have been incapable of saying that. To give a parallel analysis, we know, for example, that Madoff stole billions of dollars. But we also know that there was conduct on Wall Street where we didn't know Mr. Madoff. Madoff didn't pull all the strings, but we know four or five people who did, and we treat them, not like criminals, but we treat them under the civil recovery SEC civil. They should be prosecuted; they should be perp-walked.
That's the same thing here. You see, negligence is forgivable. Somebody makes a bad mistake. OK, well, you know, people are human. We are not infallible.
But, when there is a design from day one. You see the design. You've taken the drink, you've jumped in the car, you've hit the gas pedal, and now you are driving 70 mph through a school zone. You know something is going to happen.
That's what this company did.
Kathleen Wells:And who represents this company? Is it the CEO? Is it the COO? Who is going to go to prison?
Mike Papantonio:That's the fallacy in the system, you see? This question is agonizing because you are sitting there saying: "There is no easy answer. We have built a Chinese wall around the CEO like Tony Hayward. Tony Hayward, we can't go put in handcuffs and dress him up in one of those little orange suits and hall him away, because Tony is going to say: "Well, I didn't really make the decision. This guy made the decision, collectively, with this team, collectively, with this company policy."
And it's a complete, utter sham.
To give you the best example I can, and this is one that is very easy to understand: Years ago, I handled the Factor VIII case. That's where this particular company had manufactured a drug that would stop hemophiliacs from bleeding. They had created a drug from whole blood. They knew that the drug that they had created from whole blood was contaminated with the HIV virus.
After hundreds of people died -- children primarily, because it's a disease that is uniquely related to male children -- after they contaminated hundreds, wiped out entire families -- because that child would then spread the disease to the sister, and the sister would spread the disease to the other brother, father, and mother -- after they were forced to take the product off of the market in the United States, they then took it and they shipped it to France, South America, and Asia and killed thousands of people.
In France, somebody went to prison. And that somebody paid the kind of price that we should be holding corporate types to: They went to prison.
In America, nobody was even arrested, much less sent to prison.
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