A judge set aside a jury award of 500 million to a large group of firefighters and other workers who were injured at Ground Zero, during the rescue and cleanup phases.
because it was too small
Some of the workers would only get a thousand dollars. A thousand dollars for serious injuries? Oh, Please. That wouldn’t cover the ambulance ride. If you took a taxi or a bus to the hospital it wouldn’t cover the initial examination at the ER.
But here’s where it’s Hope-full. It sets a precedent that impacts the ongoing litigation over Agent Orange and Depleted Uranium, and the pitiful judicial response to the Corporate Murder of the town of Bhopal, India. In these cases, a “one time Payout” was authorized and then only for those who filed their claims before an arbitrary date. Miss Johnnie, for instance, her husband was killed by the Air Force with his VietNam service by Agent Orange. His symptoms started AFTER the arbitrary date set by the courts. An Ex-Military civilian doctor diagnosed him with it before he died, but of course the Pentagon Minions wouldn’t act on it… until 5 years after he died.
Miss Johnnie went from being a successful small business owner here and in Kansas, printing tee shirts with her husband, to being nearly bankrupted by his illness and then, afterward, a bout with thieves and lymphoma, driven to the point of being homeless. Imagine, homeless on the streets of Colorado Springs, while taking chemotherapy. Not something the “Come in from the cold” so called “activists” would even admit, far less be proud of.
But, there’s been 5 successful lawsuits against Monsanto over the past three years regarding Agent Orange. All individual, not class action. Bhopal, the Union Carbide Corporation paid out an average of $500 for each death, set up an emergency clinic to treat the injured, or, to be more precise, treat the injured who had symptoms before the cutoff date.
Then they simply abandoned the dying and the toxic waste from their operation and moved their poisonous business model elsewhere.
The People of Bhopal didn’t and still don’t have the opportunity to move away from the Death Pool. The American Republican Party, in a massive display of Christian Charity, (for those who can’t read very well, that word means “caring”, the basis for all love) condemned the judgment…
As being too much. The Poor, you see, well, our lives aren’t worth as much as those of Rich People. The Tort Reform Movement jumped on it like flies on a shitpile.
The Two Towers of Christian Conservatism, Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich, jumped in, saying that paying thouusands of dollars for the death of a child who probably wouldn’t make $10,000 in his lifetime (of course, not any fault of the Union Carbide Corporation paying them slave wages and treating them as disposable, of course of course… The Beggars should have been GRATEFUL for the opportunity to die for the company at a wage of pennies a day!) was a travesty.
Maybe, perhaps, today’s ruling will impact that case. The people are still dying more than twenty years later.
For the inevitable Republican readers who will be outraged by my opinion on it, a simple question: How much would you sell YOUR child’s life for? What would be a “fair settlement” for your kid being taken away forever?
