Three companies agree to pay $1B to settle 'forever chemical' claims

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/03/business/pfas-chemours-dupont-corteva-settlement/index.html

by gmays • 3 years ago

141 75 3 years ago

notRobot• 3 years ago

$1B combined, not individually

The three companies said they have agreed to contribute a total of $1.185 billion to a settlement fund. Chemours will contribute 50 percent (about $592 million), and DuPont and Corteva will together contribute the remaining 50 percent, at about $400 million and $193 million, respectively.

fuzzfactor• 3 years ago

I would say the toxins will last a lot longer than the $1 Billion will.

ProAm• 3 years ago

This is not enough of a penalty.

Zetice• 3 years ago

When a payout like this occurs, does it mean the problem is resolved? In other words, are these companies no longer putting out toxic chemicals, or are they buying the ability to continue to do that without fear of further lawsuits?

pluc• 3 years ago

In a statement, Dupont said it “has never manufactured PFOA or PFOS.” CNN has reached out to the other companies for comment on the allegations, which they denied in a press release Friday.

How can they stop something they never did

laputan_machine• 3 years ago

Then there would be no evidence, which would mean the court case would be thrown out / one-sided. Instead they settled for a large amount of money. Does that not make you raise your eyebrows?

rebolek• 3 years ago

you forgot /s

ceejayoz2• 3 years ago

I don't understand that statement. It seems to be an outright lie, or quoted out of context; not sure which, and both are plausible.

https://www.dupont.com/position-statements/pfoa.html says "While we no longer make PFOA..."

moi2388• 3 years ago

DuPont is lying. They 100% did produce these materials. We have a factory on my place from which they dump this in the river.

EscapeFromNY2• 3 years ago

I can think of plenty of ways that sentence might be weaselly.

Maybe they "synthesized" them, not "manufactured"

Maybe they bought them from some other company (which they might happen to own)

Maybe they manufactured PFAs in general, but not the specific chemicals PFOA or PFOS (it's an awfully specific statement, after all)

sebzim4500• 3 years ago

I am aware that companies sometimes settle cases where they are in the right in order to avoid legal fees, but the idea that Dupont paid $400M in this settlement despite having not manufactured the chemicals in question is absurd.

If they thought they weren't liable then they would have fought this in court.

rqtwteye2• 3 years ago

The problem has been “resolved” in the sense that the companies and government don’t have to deal with it anymore. That’s the goal.

agilob• 3 years ago

I'll pay you $1B to shut up

CommanderData• 3 years ago

Pocket change.

This is not accountability for infecting the worlds population with these nasty chemicals.

mensetmanusman2• 3 years ago

PFAS technology was top secret WW2 research output. Then the military discovered that they had amazing properties to fight extremely dangerous fires in missile warehouses and were eventually required to use them to maximize safety decades ago.

Prozac, Lipitor, Flonase and about 30% of upcoming new pharmaceutical drugs are PFAS, so they aren't going away completely, because society has determined that they are valuable even if they can reach toxic levels if not disposed of properly (every chemical is toxic after a certain human concentration, including water).

Companies wouldn't be able to manufacture semiconductors without PFAS as well, or high temperature components for warfare.

Now that we are smarter, we know how to mitigate risk and reduce concentrating materials to keep below relevant ppb thresholds.

If America isn't educationally sophisticated enough to handle this manufacturing and risk, it will just be done in zero regulation geographies like China and the world will be worse off.

bluedays• 3 years ago

PFAS is not used in pharmaceutical drugs.

saiya-jin2• 3 years ago

What about we first find out how much of it is actually toxic (which seems rather 1/1000th of current official numbers) and then start using them in processes which actually respects that? It still doesn't cover accumulation in bodies over time though.

You don't gain any longterm competitive advantage by poisoning half of your population, giving them wonderful cancers, infertility, massive amount of birth defects etc. You just destroy society and bankrupt medical insurance.

This isn't some economics and plying with abstract numbers, these are people out there and messing this up badly will have massive negative impacts for many generations.

JohnFen5• 3 years ago

because society has determined that they are valuable even if they can reach toxic levels if not disposed of properly

Society never decided this one way or another. Rich and powerful corporations did.

EscapeFromNY2• 3 years ago

https://www.dupont.com/news/dupont-reports-fourth-quarter-an...

Look at these numbers, extrapolate them to the decades they've been in business, and then compare them to DuPont's payment here of $400 million. The numbers aren't even close.

PaulKeeble• 3 years ago

The cost for anything like this should always be the cost of cleaning up the entire mess it created and compensating the humans harmed by it and covering their lifetime medical bills. $1billion sounds a tad low for doing any of that given the world wide impact. Its a bad deal.

rqtwteye2• 3 years ago

Agreed. Most of the money probably doesn’t even go to the people who got damaged.

BizarroLand• 3 years ago

Yeah, it's a "make the victims feel like they got some justice" money but not anywhere near enough to actually solve the problem or to repay the damages.

They're basically getting off scott free, and they made tens of billions of dollars in profit for only having to pay 1 billion in damages.

wmeredith• 3 years ago

Justice served would be jail time for execs or a corporate death penalty. Levying a fine means it's just a cost of doing business. And a billion dollars sounds like a lot, but it's a drop in the bucket for these massive multinational corporations that have been in business for decades.

politician4• 3 years ago

a corporate death penalty

So, no more Kevlar for police protection? The problem with the idea of a corporate death penalty is that it would shutter the corporation, shock the supply chain for critical materials, terminate the employment of thousands of people, and devastate their communities (e.g. because employees have families and those families consume food and stuff from the local economy which, in turn, supports other families).

It's obvious why we haven't adopted it as a viable punishment.

briantakita3• 3 years ago

Perhaps the death penalty for the execs would cause some real reform. Japanese culture had the concept to Seppuku when someone brought shame to their position. They seem to take their jobs seriously.

hospitalJail• 3 years ago

Back when I was 19 and an anarchist, I was always critical of LLC laws. I probably still am.

I believe the judicial system does do the fine as you mentioned, but the prosecutors have to be realistic and settle out of court at the risk a skeptical judge/jury.

Without LLC laws, you could go after personal ownership too. Privately owned company means there is a few billionaires to have their wealth confiscated. Publicly, our 401ks empty + risk of losing our homes.

Isn't that insane to think about? What would a world look like if that was the case. Would companies be incredibly responsible? Would investors be incredibly responsible?

I don't claim to say this is the best economic system, but it might solve our climate crisis by forcing people to be liable for themselves and what they own.

Ekaros• 3 years ago

I wonder if we could have fractional death penalty. Some lifetime counter on your responsibility of deaths by companies you own. When certain threshold let's say 0.5 is reached, it will be carried out when ever you are apprehended.

lesuorac3• 3 years ago

I'm not sure that the LLC laws are exactly the problem.

I think it's the fact that you can get a company incorporated to do pretty much a vague _anything_ is the problem. There should be an ounce of thought by the State as to if what the person wants a company for is actually useful for society before granting them immunity.

The second major issue is that the State is never willing to dissolve a company once it reaches some size no matter how much wrong doing it does. Like Walls Fargo willfully creating fake accounts to charge consumers money should've just be an instant disqualification for a banking license.

mindslight• 3 years ago

Individuals and small businesses generally don't get great protection from LLC/incorporation and they get along just fine (when the owners are directly involved in running the business, it becomes much easier to pierce the veil).

IMO, what really needs to be reigned in is this blanket extension of natural/individual rights to synthetic entities that receive limited liability protection. That government-granted charter with limited liability means that they're not merely groups of people exercising individual rights collectively, as the supreme council has decreed.

stcroixx• 3 years ago

They are not absolved of their remediation responsibilities, which are separate from these claims.

rieg3c• 3 years ago

i'm reading these are used everywhere, pretty much like plastics :(

i really think this problem is out of our hands, i wonder how much time we have until the food and water has so much plastic and forever chemicals that it isn't safe to eat anymore

Invictus0• 3 years ago

Just the cost of doing business. They paid pennies on the dollar for the damage they inflicted and they will do it again next time it suits them.

stodor89• 3 years ago

Another day, another slap on the wrist.

JoeAltmaier• 3 years ago

Isn't $1B a trivial amount for environmental damage?

HWR_143• 3 years ago

This is only to cover damage to the drinking water (and excludes any drinking water supplied by state or federal governments). More lawsuits or settlements can concern themselves with damage to the environment.

As for if that is a trivial amount for what they are paying for, I don't know.

Sunspark• 3 years ago

Yes. It's an absolute steal of a price to pay for something that persists in the environment. It seems like a big number to people who live off a paycheck but if you compare it to a project like a section of highway construction or an airport or whatever you quickly see that this is no penalty. Put another way, an NBA basketball franchise is worth 2.86 billion on average. The penalty is basically 1/3rd of a pro level basketball franchise.

JohnFen5• 3 years ago

Yes, it's meaningless.

Once again, these huge corporations are destroying the world for profit and getting away with it.

29athrowaway• 3 years ago

They made more than $1B and caused more than $1B in damages. This is a slap on the wrist.

cgb223• 3 years ago

I mean it’s great they’re paying a fine, but are they going to you know, develop anything that will pull these forever chemicals out of the water?

intelVISA• 3 years ago

Don't be silly, have you even thought of the stakeholders?

sledgehammers• 3 years ago

The leadership should go to jail. The fine should be 100x.

Agingcoder• 3 years ago

If they agree then it’s not expensive enough.

Eddy_Viscosity2• 3 years ago

Seems kinda low given the scope and bets that amount a) gets substantially reduced later on and b) will be claimed as business expense so will have a even lesser net effect. Its just minor inconvenience for them.

MrYellowP• 3 years ago

This is a fucking joke and nobody can do anything about it.

Three companies agree to pay $1B to settle 'forever chemical' claims

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