Hacker News Reader

Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

A useful thing to know about this case is that the plaintiff took pains not to base their case on the carcinogenicity of glyphosate, but rather of Roundup, which is less than half glyphosate. During their opening statement, any time they referenced a study about about glyphosate, they'd say "but remember that study only looked at glyphosate, not Roundup, and as we all know, more than half of Roundup is other stuff".

They seemed particularly interested in promoting a theory that the surfectant POEA had something to do with the illness.

View on HN

So Monsanto were selling a dangerous pesticide and intentionally obfuscating its effects. It doesn't matter what part of the composition was toxic in this context. It's not pertinent in the real world whether gyphosate or something else was toxic, the substance in question is Round Up. If you're trying to have a debate about the merits of glyphosate that's a different subject. I think I linked you to the emails from the discovery for this case in another thread, where the scientists involved clearly knew that something was toxic and were scrambling to discover what at the same time that their superiors were scrambling to cover it up.

Sure? My point is just that the case wasn't about glyphosate but about a particular Monsanto product. I sort of don't care what happens to Monsanto.

Point taken in that respect, I agree with you that glyphosate hasn't proven to be toxic or mutagenic across quite a lot of research, but if there's no non-toxic delivery vehicle for it it doesn't matter much :)

Is it possible that neither chemical is toxic alone but when used together they are?

> I sort of don't care what happens to Monsanto.

And yet you comment on every thread that mentions them :)

I do, because they are full of nonsense, and I am like a moth to the buglight with that kind of thing.

It's unfortunate that your continued vehemence with "that kind of thing" doesn't translate to being generally right as often, or even making for a pleasant discussion, participating or just reading along.

I see your name at the top of a thread, I just know I'm in for reading a huge thread that isn't much about the topic at hand (that alone should give you sufficient pause for thought), but about you trying to prove people wrong about an increasingly narrow question that you framed yourself.

In the end, you technically get to be right, and nobody learned anything.

Sorry. Never mind. I'm wrong. Glyphosate is a carcinogen, Monsanto sues every farmer within a 10 mile radius of one of their Roundup-Ready customers, the IARC and California carcinogenicity warnings are entirely reputable and based on only the soundest of science, and if you work for a corporation, prosecutors have to prove your boss didn't order you to commit a crime before they can come after you. Sorry for obstructing those truths. :)

> So Monsanto were selling a dangerous pesticide and intentionally obfuscating its effects.

The same Monsanto that manufactured PCBs and Agent Orange? That's a crazy coincidence.

Well, no, not the same Monsanto that did any of that. They spun off their chemical division in 1996. [0]

More philosophically (and despite what SCOTUS has to say about it), companies aren't people; they are run by people. "Monsanto" can't do anything. The people running Monsanto have agency.

And the people who did the things you mention here are dead.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/11/business/monsanto-plans-t...

Did any of the people in decision making positions today work under the old guard? That might suggest a corporate culture that's been perpetuated.

The people running Monsanto are buffered - if not always protected entirely - by numerous laws from facing the consequences of their actions, precisely because they take those actions in the context of a corporate entity.

If I poison my neighbour and I'm caught, I'm going to jail. (In the US I may face the death penalty.)

If I'm working inside a corporate and my decisions poison [unknown power of ten] people and cause [unknown but significant] number of serious and possibly fatal illnesses, I am protected by the profit motive - possibly forever, and in the best case until such time as there's a legal case which the corporate loses, and then loses again, definitively, on appeal.

This is not hypothetical. There are many historical examples - not least the tobacco industry, the fossil fuel industries, the car industry, and many, many more.

It's a curious situation, and not a very satisfactory one.

We really should not be allowing the pursuit of profit as an excuse for collectively harmful activities.

Are you sure about that whole "buffer" argument? Can you back it up with sources? I'm not sure that's correct.

Not the OP, but there's a long history of evidence that powerful corporations get away with a whole lot of things-- including murder. There is a great documentary by the BBC called The Century of the Self[0]. It isn't explicitly about this-- it's much broader-- but it does tangentially serve as sources for this kind of claim. Well worth a watch regardless of your views.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s

It's not that you aren't the original commenter, but that you're not making the same argument. I'm interested in an answer to the question I actually asked.

My answer is in the linked video, and doesn’t fit into a sound bite. If I understand your question, you are asking for evidence that corporations get away with things that normal citizens wouldn’t. The answer is that history provides ample evidence to back up this claim, and my link is one such piece of evidence.

No, you don't understand my question. My question is: is there some legal basis for the idea that a corporation serves as a liability "buffer" for the actions of its employees?

If corporations can get away with things individuals can't and, as someone above said

> companies aren't people; they are run by people. "Monsanto" can't do anything. The people running Monsanto have agency.

Then that implies there are individuals using companies to get away with things they otherwise wouldn't be able to.

Sounds like your question has now moved the goal posts on what you imagine to be "that whole buffer argument".

What matters is whether corporations routinely get away with stuff that individuals don't, in practice. Not whether there's a "legal basis" for it.

And this is wide spread, plain obvious and readily admitted by most Americans.

Your framing of the question edges on the disingenuous because it really doesn't matter, even if there was legal basis to this or to the opposite, it would be selectively applied to large corporations any way. So many things for which there actually is a legal basis when it concerns individuals, corporations get away with in practice so frequently, that most individuals (of modal income) don't even attempt and try to get their right. Because they'll lose or bleed an unknown amount of money into it, which they probably can't afford.

I have to think they're referring to the corporate veil.

That refers to civil liability --- in fact, mostly to contract liability, since tort claims sort of automatically "pierce".

Source: “The Chickenshit Club” by Eisinger. Explains how DOJ and SEC have moved to civil actions because they’re easier to prosecute, letting individuals at corps off the hook for actions they’d be criminally liable for if they took them against an individual in their individual capacity.

For starters, there are a number of recent Supreme Court decisions (interpreting the Federal Arbitration Act) that allow ToS to prevent consumers from suing as a class [1, 2], thereby ensuring disparate legal resources in favor of a corporation.

Generally speaking, the difficulty in bringing criminal cases against employees of corporations is convincing a court to pierce the corporate veil.

Unfortunately, this presents a catch-22. In order to prosecute an individual for corporate actions, one typically needs to prove the individual engaged in fraud or knowingly illegal actions (circumstances that justify piercing). However, if proved, one is unable to also sue the corporation (as you just argued the individual was acting against corporate interests and/or without corporate knowledge).

Furthermore, and I hope a lawyer corrects me if I'm wrong, criminal law requires much more stringent tests to prove guilty intent. In nebulous corporate power structures (and employing very expensive lawyers to design systems to shield themselves from exposing this proof), this is usually impossible.

E.g. criminal prosecutions over the housing crisis

[1] AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion (2011), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Mobility_LLC_v._Concepc...

[2] American Express v. Italian Colors (2013), http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/06/details-american-express-v...

I'm not sure I find this argument credible, since "piercing the corporate veil" is mostly a civil law concept; as I understand it, the model "veil" case is one in which Joe performs some service for BobCo, which promptly goes out of business upon receiving Joe's invoice. Joe would like to sue Bob, but his contract is with BobCo. There are instances where Joe can in fact sue Bob; those are the typical "veil" cases.

There is, as I understand it (as a company operator, not a lawyer, which I am not, though I have talked to them about this because I worry about getting sued) no "corporate veil" for torts. If Joe undertakes a service for BobCo, and Bob knowingly pays Joe in counterfeit dollars, Joe can sue Bob for fraud. If Joe performs that service competently and Bob defames him, maybe by claiming Joe stole all the company pencils and post-its, Joe can sue Bob for defamation. Joe might also be able to sue BobCo, but that's no consolation for Bob.

Given all this: I am having a hard time getting my head around how limited liability shields agents of a corporation from criminal charges.

(IANAL) I believe the definition of corporations varies widely enough from state to state that there may not even be an answer to this question.

My understanding is that there is still generally a veil in tort law, except when the tort was committed personally by an agent of the corporation.

I hit you in a company vehicle through my own negligence, you sue me.

I hit you in a company vehicle because I wasn't properly trained, you sue me and my company.

I hit you in a poorly maintained company vehicle and the steering column failed... who knows?

Fairly simple. But all cases of tort law are not personal.

Example being the Volkswagen emission case (okay, criminal too, but let's say a citizen is suing under tort law). Who's at fault?

As soon as I (the plaintiff) lose the ability to clearly point a finger, things get much murkier. Now I have to prove participation or a handful of other caveats to pierce and sue an employee. Probably by digging through thousands of emails.

This is where I'd say from a system perspective corporations provide a de facto buffer, even if it's not a legal one. Compared to simply suing an individual, proving all of this is much more expensive. Which now can't be aggregated (why I highlighted arbitration) so costs can't be divided.

I think we are now trying to work from axioms to a legal question neither of us are qualified to answer. But my current understanding is: working for a giant company while knowingly breaking the law, whether or not your company tells you to do it, does not shield you in any way from criminal liability.

As I understand it, the "interesting" questions here are the extent to which you can hold directors or even major shareholders responsible for criminal conduct --- people who may not have been directly implicated in crimes themselves. But if you commit a crime while working for Dow Chemical, or instruct someone to commit a crime who then does so, Dow's liability shield can't keep you out of prison.

I'm certainly going to ask my corporate lawyer friends next time I see them. But my disagreement is with the "does not shield you in any way", and where I say there is a de facto buffer.

If I commit a crime while working for Dow Chemical, the plaintiff must prove that (1) a crime was committed and (2) that I was personally responsible for it being committed.

This sounds exactly like what would need to be proved if I were unemployed and committed a crime, but the different regimes of tort, criminal, and corporate law that bank switch into play when a corporation is involved mean the lawsuit proceeds under different rules.

Essentially, I'd argue that case law affords someone working for a corporation far more options for defense than an average Joe, thereby making it unequal (aka buffering).

Let me know what they say!

With regards to your (1), (2) predicates: that's the case in every crime! Corporations present the additional problem of whether a person who instructed (or set up an incentive system that effectively instructed) you to commit a crime is also criminally liable. But your boss's liability, so far as I understand the law, never shields you from liability.

We want there to be joint liability between the person who commits the crime and the person who orders and profits from the crime. I'm ready to believe it's challenging to achieve that; that often only the people who actually commit crimes are charged in these corporate cases. But this subthread started because I read your first comment as suggesting that, simply by dint of committing a crime at a corporation, the alter ego liability of the corporation protected criminals. I do not believe that.

> But if you commit a crime while working for Dow Chemical, or instruct someone to commit a crime who then does so, Dow's liability shield can't keep you out of prison.

How about if you, in a powerful role, change incentives within the company such that people working under you are all but guaranteed to commit crimes, simply because the ones who refuse to will end up lower on the corporate ladder, so the supplicants and ones that will gladly commit crimes for you without having to be explicitly instructed, will remain?

Because that's not a very hypothetical power structure, at all.

As I implied, the Supreme Court has some unintuitive thoughts about the personhood of corporations. And there may be various other legal constructs that bolster your claims here (I don't actually know).

But, as a philosophy, the notion that the decision to use Agent Orange in Vietnam has anything to with the debate about GMOs or the carcinogenic effects of glyphosate is a position that will only mislead and confuse you.

It's not a useful lens through which to view the world and the regularity with which arguments of this form appear in threads like this one is discouraging.

You want to outlaw the car industry (for example) because it is collectively harmful and profit is being pursued?

What do you propose instead? Cars replaced horses. The latter regularly gravely injured people, and the dead horses and manure were a major health hazard in cities.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: all companies should be Public Benefit Corporations. PBCs are companies which, in addition to having a fiduciary duty to their shareholders, may add benefitting the public to their charter.

"Dump our waste in the river which is the water supply in order to save 2% on downstream costs? Sorry investors, no can do. That harms the public."

Make it part of CEOs job to benefit the public instead of make the rich richer. Why would we ever want a company that doesn't benefit the public?

I'd love to hear the reason for the downvotes. I'm not surprised - it is kind of radical - but I am curious why people think its a bad idea. I'm sure there are good reasons, I'm not an economist and I haven't thought about it that deeply for that long.

That's sophistry. You can take that line of argument to absolve anyone or anything from responsibility.

For example, none of the cells in my body are the same as ten years ago, ergo this is not the same body as a decade ago. Or, there is no continuity between my thoughts then and now, therefore mentally I am not the same entity. Or, all of the individuals composing a company when it committed an environmental crime are now retired, therefore it is no longer the same company.

Seriously? What about the continuity of corporate culture and management processes?

In your frenzy to hold Monsanto culpable for their “corporate culture and management processes” (whatever that means), you’re making arguments that you wouldn’t yourself endorse in any other context.

The son is not responsible for the sins of the father, no matter how much of the father’s “culture” he picked up along the way.

Agent Orange has nothing to do with GMOs or glyphosate. It just doesn’t. Full stop.

If we follow your argument to its logical conclusion, then no company could be held responsible for its actions if more than a generation had passed, because all the constituent employees would then have left.

But by the same logic, if companies are just convenient fictions, then they should have no rights whatsoever beyond those of their constituent employees - no fiscal benefits, no corporate donations, no political lobbying, no corporate legal representation, etc. Is that also your position?

No. You’re making a legal argument. Maybe that’s useful. Maybe not. But if your goal is to better understand the world, then it’s a dead-end.

(In other words, litigating the history of Agent Orange does not clarify or contextualie this discussion about glyphosate; it adds only unnecessary and unhelpful moral confusion. It obfuscates and misleads. It is political axe-grinding of the worst kind.)

Why not? It's the same legal entity committing both crimes.

Again, you're focusing on the legal entity. Maybe it's useful to hold the entity liable. Maybe not (I suspect not, but it's unrelated to my point).

My point is that if you want to meaningfully engage in and understand a debate about glyphosate on the Internet, then a subthread about Agent Orange is guaranteed to confuse, distract, and mislead.

It has nothing to do with the topic at hand. It's political axe-grinding. It's mere well-poisoning (and would be even if the same people were involved, but, moreover, the people responsible for Agent Orange are dead).

But corporate culture can matter. And culture affects who gets hired and how the employees act, even when new people come in.

If you ask biz school profs, culture is essential.

To me the bigger problem about treating corps as people is corps are willing to renege on any deal if it benefits them, and pursue profit at all costs. If a person you know acted like that, you’d call them a sociopath.

So “Corporations are people: sociopathic people.” Is probably the best description.

I followed that argument a bit, and what I found was a Seralini study (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5756058/). He is known for some really bad studies about GMOs, those were simply terrible science and he obviously has an axe to grind.

The POEA experiments in that paper were about exposing cell cultures to different roundup compositions and components. It is not surprising that POEA kills the cells in this kind of experiment as it is a kind of detergent. Human cell cultures have no defense against having their cell membranes disrupted by detergents. Real humans are not cell cultures and can't be easily killed that mechanism. We have skin and other barriers like mucous membranes that protect the cells.

I didn't look much further, but seeing that paper as the first result does make me very skeptical about the idea.

I'm confused, are you arguing that cellular changes cannot impact a larger organism because they have too many cells?

That's not how I'd interpret this sentence: "We have skin and other barriers that protect the cells." It sounds to me like the author claims that humans have skin, which is true, and that skin forms a barrier that protects internal cells, which is extremely plausible.

That's a literal interpretation. A contextual interpretation implies that Roundup cannot cause harm through the observed means because it cannot clear the skin, the latter of which is patently false.

No. The contextual interpretation says that the above-mentioned study doesn't prove Roundup is harmful because the same results would be observed with any detergent, to which we are regularly exposed without suffering any harm.

Therefore, Roundup might or might not be harmful, but the study doesn't tell us much about it.

> to which we are regularly exposed without suffering any harm.

Right, because we're instructed not to consume detergents. Following this instruction keeps the detergents outside the body.

We are instructed to consume food grown with herbicides such as Roundup, and Roundup is often (if not always) delivered in a sprayed manner with significant aerosolization.

Cell cultures are plain cells growing in a plastic bottle. Human cells have only a cell membrane made of phospholipids around them, which can get easily disrupted by detergents. Humans don't die when exposed to a drop of soap, cell cultures do.

That doesn't mean that a detergents can't have other effects that are harmful to humans. It just means that I don't think a cell culture experiment proves anything in such a case. A study in animals would be something different.

The landscape is riddled with data from cell lines that doesn’t extrapolate to whole organisms. There is a massive difference between the two.

> We have skin and other barriers that protect the cells.

This disregards the fact that Roundup can easily be inhaled or absorbed through food consumption or through skin-to-mouth contact.

It's literally sprayed. And when it's on food, it can easily be consumed.

yeah, you have to be careful with the studies that equate stuff in cell culture with stuff in real organisms.

we have metrics for "chemical X probabalistically causes cancer Y in tissue Z".

you can play games with the ROA and the probability. but the type of chemical (detergent, etc) is a non sequitor. if you expose cells to a detergent in high enough concentration, they'll lyse.

lysed cells are an ENTIRELY distinct "type" of cell death than the kind of cell death signature that you would see if the cell were cancerous. the author of that study didn't do any flow cytometry on his 293 T samples by the looks of it, but if he had, the differences would be enlightening. compare someone who has died in a plane crash to someone who died of ebola. you'd know that one was not the other very easily even if you couldn't attribute a cause.

anyhow, i looked at that paper you linked. the other big problem with the monsanto chemical -- which was not even mentioned in the lawsuit (!) was that it is an endocrine disruptor even in situations where it is not toxic. in other words, it's terrible for you and will distort your body's hormone chemistry in ways we probably don't even understand yet. that's just as big of a story as the chemical being legally confirmed as carcinogenic.

And yet this is the first line of the article:

"Chemical giant Monsanto has been ordered to pay $289m (£226m) damages to a man who claimed herbicides containing glyphosate had caused his cancer."

another useful thing to know about this case is that monsanto was found to be malicious and intentional with regard to their obfuscation of the issue.

pray tell, why would a legitimate scientific inquiry need to be malicious and attempt to obfuscate contradictory research?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com