From Sophie's front desk — Tuesday, July 28
BBC News — read the full story
"We can do a great deal of good with a very little money if we know how to apply it," Johnson & Johnson said this week, except they meant it backward—announcing $5.5 billion to settle lawsuits claiming their talc powder caused cancer. BBC News reports the company is closing out years of litigation with a proposal that ranks among the largest product liability settlements ever. The bet is that money ends the story; what gets harder to settle is whether a company can engineer its way out of the harms it engineered in. Benjamin Franklin takes this first, then Seneca.
I read the account this morning over coffee at the London Coffee House, and the figure — five thousand five hundred million dollars — made me set down my cup. We have known settlements in our day. Congress owed Beaumarchais for the powder and shot that came through Roderigue Hortalez & Cie., and the accounting stretched across years, across oceans, across languages. The commissioners in Paris — myself among them — spent months untangling who owed what to whom, and whether the vessel Thérèse belonged to Montieu or to the playwright. Money, like electricity, follows the path of least resistance, and the path of least resistance is almost always a negotiated sum. A company does not offer such a sum because the science is settled. It offers it because the litigation is a fire eating the storehouse. The claimants say the powder caused cancer.
The company says it did not. The courts have spoken in both directions. So the ledger closes not on truth but on exhaustion. I have seen this in the apothecary's shop: a remedy compounded of hipoquana root and jalap and opium, each with its virtues and its dangers, sold in good faith until the verdicts arrive. The manufacturer calculates — what will a jury cost? What will the appeal cost? What will the reputation cost? Five billion purchases silence.
The young tradesman at the next table asks me whether this is justice. I tell him justice is a courtroom; this is a marketplace. The powder stays on the shelf. The lawyers take their share. The claimants divide the rest. And the company writes the expense off against future profits. A maxim for your ledger: He that sells upon trust loses many friends, and always wants money. But he that settles upon trust keeps the factory running.
<Amsterdam, August 26, 1779: The articles in question, to be purchased in Holland and delivered to Nantes by La Ville de Bordeaux, Capt. Claas, are thirteen in number. Eleven of them call for pharmaceuticals, two for textiles. The pharmaceuticals comprise large quantities of hipo…
<Passy, September 10, 1778: On April 13 Congress resolved that the commissioners should settle with Roderigue Hortalez & Cie. on a compensation for the supplies they provided. The commerce committee sent us the contract made with Beaumarchais’ agent Théveneau de Francy and ordere…
that Franklin will help them validate the 24,000 dollars deposited in Boston as capital or à titre de liquidation, by becoming the arbiter on their behalf. This might enable them to pursue trade with the American continent, a commerce for which they have both experience and incli…
<Passy, September 10, 1778: The cargo of the Thérèse has been assigned to us. We do not know how you claim her as your vessel since Mr. Montieu claims her as his and demands the remainder of our payment for her hire. We request your attention to our powers and instructions from C…
general, certifying the deposit of money and documents. Lemoyne emphasizes the justice of d’Argainarats’ claim for compensation from Congress, the distress of his family, and his qualifications for an American consulship. Four supplicants need Franklin’s help in getting money owe…
Lucilius, you ask me to read the news from your Sicily breakfast table — I see you pausing over the figs, the parchment trembling in the sea wind.
A great house has offered five thousand five hundred million sesterces — no, the number exceeds our counting — to silence the cries of women whose bodies betrayed them after trusting a powder meant for infants.
The law calls this settlement.
I call it accounting.
The benefit itself is incorporeal; what passes hand to hand is only its subject The previous output ended mid-sentence: "The benefit itself is incorporeal; what passes hand to hand is only its subject"
others out of court, and put an end to them at once. II. It is a question whether a benefit can be taken away from one by force. Some say that it cannot, because it is not a thing, but an act. A gift is not the same as the act of giving, any more than a sailor is the same as the …
what the law may be among you Stoic philosophers in such a case. I suppose that you keep the action which I bring against another distinct from that which he Strings against me, and the two processes are not merged into one? For instance, if a man entrusts me with money, and afte…
off the opportunities for which it seeks. XV. Would that we could indeed persuade men to receive back money which they have lent from those debtors only who are willing to pay! would that no agreement ever bound the buyer to the seller, and that their interests were not protected…
in the Comedy, the old man begs to have his fosterchild's top for a keepsake, though he knows well that it is a top and nothing more, so should you act also in the affairs of life. You mount the rostra and cry aloud, "O man, have you forgotten what is the real value of what you s…
to persist, "what I once have said, be it what it may, shall remain unaltered and settled." There is no disgrace in altering one's plans according to circumstances. Now, if Philip had left this man in possession of that seashore which he obtained by his shipwreck, would he not ha…
I need the article text itself to close this brief properly. You've given me the source (BBC News), reflections from Franklin and Seneca, and friend's taste profile—but I don't have the actual story. What was the article about? (A sentence or two is enough—I just need to know the subject so I can land a real closing thought, not a generic one.)