James Hardie Case
The Inquiry into the James Hardie transactions: whitewashing some very dirty linen
The Inquiry is over, the heads of agreement are signed and the CEO is appropriately publicly contrite — the matter of the James Hardie Group’s attempt to distance itself from $1.5 billion tort liabilities seems to have been resolved to everyone’s reasonable satisfaction. Should we move on, consigning委托 the episode插曲 to the dustbin of understandings of the world’s inevitable moral turpitude不可避免的道德沦丧?
If it were simply an episode一个小插曲 and if there were nothing to be learned from it other than that bad things happen and that some people have problems with being ethical, we might so consign it. But if a consideration of the episode reveals systemic issues in our legal and moral framework, there is a point to a thorough examination of what happened and what its implications are. And that is the case here.
Those issues are not, however, just the obvious明显 ones. Certainly the very idea of a board of directors setting about ensuring that their company avoid paying compensation to tort victims受害者 suffering a very nasty 讨厌disease is repugnant反感. As even Commissioner Jackson said:
To put it directly, JHI NV still has in its pockets the profits made by dealing in asbestos, and those profits are large enough to satisfy most, perhaps all, of the claims of victims of James Hardie asbestos. And, as I have said in other Chapters, the causes of actions now arising are by reason of negligent conduct过失行为 which took place during the period when profits were being made from asbestos.[1]
But that is obvious and commonplace屡见不鲜. There is far more to it; to see these issues it is necessary to delve into what happened.
The link between asbestos and disease is hardly novel. The Romans knew of it. Yet products made with asbestos were very useful, crucially for the James Hardie group, in brakes and building. After all, many things (including Coca Cola) are made with materials which
The Inquiry is over, the heads of agreement are signed and the CEO is appropriately publicly contrite — the matter of the James Hardie Group’s attempt to distance itself from $1.5 billion tort liabilities seems to have been resolved to everyone’s reasonable satisfaction. Should we move on, consigning委托 the episode插曲 to the dustbin of understandings of the world’s inevitable moral turpitude不可避免的道德沦丧?
If it were simply an episode一个小插曲 and if there were nothing to be learned from it other than that bad things happen and that some people have problems with being ethical, we might so consign it. But if a consideration of the episode reveals systemic issues in our legal and moral framework, there is a point to a thorough examination of what happened and what its implications are. And that is the case here.
Those issues are not, however, just the obvious明显 ones. Certainly the very idea of a board of directors setting about ensuring that their company avoid paying compensation to tort victims受害者 suffering a very nasty 讨厌disease is repugnant反感. As even Commissioner Jackson said:
To put it directly, JHI NV still has in its pockets the profits made by dealing in asbestos, and those profits are large enough to satisfy most, perhaps all, of the claims of victims of James Hardie asbestos. And, as I have said in other Chapters, the causes of actions now arising are by reason of negligent conduct过失行为 which took place during the period when profits were being made from asbestos.[1]
But that is obvious and commonplace屡见不鲜. There is far more to it; to see these issues it is necessary to delve into what happened.
The link between asbestos and disease is hardly novel. The Romans knew of it. Yet products made with asbestos were very useful, crucially for the James Hardie group, in brakes and building. After all, many things (including Coca Cola) are made with materials which