Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by 4ec0755f5522 1105 days ago
Hard disagree; companies should be responsible for harm caused by their products regardless of whether it's "legal". This is "loophole thinking" and it only benefits bad actors.
3 comments

Doing something that's not illegal is not a loophole. A loophole involves doing something that would otherwise be illegal in a manner that makes it ambiguously not illegal, often due to a poorly-made law.
A lawsuit is about harm. If it's a civil lawsuit, you can absolutely be sued for doing things which you know to be harmful to others, even if they aren't crimes. That's what a tort is. The purpose of such private lawsuits it to give people a legal mechanism for redress that doesn't involve physically attacking each other or trying to legislate everything.
>know to be harmful to others

This is the key fact. I had a look at the evidence, and I'm not seeing any harm myself.

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_subst...

Taking an example of developmental problems, there is this study:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4344877/

but it doesn't seem to have been replicated, at least in mice:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5345697/

What is your goal with this comment?

> I had a look at the evidence

The evidence isn't difficult to search for, and your 30 second "look" at two sources from the Wikipedia article doesn't exactly amount to a meta analysis.

If you can post that meta-analysis that would be helpful, thanks. My goal is to find the evidence. It seems you have it, so it would be useful if you could post it. Generally if there is a meta-analysis or robust evidence it will be in the wikipedia article. If not, I'd love for you to add it (or I can). Evidence shouldn't be hard to find...
Why should evidence not be hard to find? It’s why we have detectives (to find evidence of crimes) and why lawsuits have long discovery processes (again, to find evidence).
Well the question of whether there was harm and whether it was or ought to have been known is precisely what a court would decide.
How do we know that any new product doesn't have long term health effects? As science advances, the ability to precisely measure health effects advances as well. In most cases, we simply don't know until it's too late. There's a realistic balance between caution and innovation.

That said, if 3M knew about and covered up known health effects, then take em for all they're worth.

Care you elaborate? I'm genuinely curious about how this plays out in in practice.

From the perspective of a driver, this fits: i am held responsible for harm i cause even if i was otherwise driving lawfully. But should my car maker be held responsible for the harm their car caused under lawful use?