Harrowing Boredom

Editors Note: The following is a long, rambling discussion on criminal and civil liabilities facing various corporations. As I wrote it and I am not a lawyer, it isn't going to be accurate at many points. It will also probably be fairly dull if you don't really give a shit about who can get sued and why and what my take on all of it is. If this doesn't sound entertaining at all to you, let me suggest This Article as a much better alternative to reading this post.


Last night I was stuck at an orientation for four hours. Two hours of that time was listening to someone that was wholly unqualified to discuss alcohol and the dangers of serving too much to patrons at the ballpark. They do this because if someone drinks too much at a game and then gets in their car and drives away and crashes into someone, the stadium is a likely candidate to get sued. It's an odd thing, that.

Bars, on a nightly basis, serve people until they are far too drunk to drive and some of those people still get in their cars and speed off. Of those people, some are destined to get into an accident, to kill someone when their car rams another head on. It's a tragedy whenever it happens, I agree with that sentiment. What I don't agree with is that it is the bars fault. They have a service that specializes in vice, they sold their wares, laws exist on the books that say that you can't just stop someone from getting into their car and driving away. Private citizens don't have the right to just stop other people from getting into their own cars and committing a crime. They have every right to call the cops and say they think someone is about to drive drunk. But that isn't necessarily their responsibility. This is something that has been bugging me since that orientation. I know that legally the bars can get sued, but at the same time no one sues them because usually they don't have enough money to make it worth going after them. The big venues, stadiums, ballparks, etc. have the money so people go after them. It doesn't matter if the person had just a couple beers at the game and it was drinking at a tailgate party or somewhere near the game that got them wasted. They were at the game, its the owner of the stadiums fault. This is the same mentality that made it so that only plastic bottles were served in stadiums. Some morons threw bottles at an ump and instead of getting pissed at them they get pissed at the conglomerate that allowed them to have glass bottles. It's such a strange world we live in. I'm not really promoting that the idea that we should change the laws at all, but it does make one wonder. How far can this idea go? When we hold someone personally responsible for their actions (i.e. driving drunk) but then hold a corporation liable in civil court, aren't we in effect saying that everyone that had any part of serving alcohol to someone that did something incredibly stupid whilst under the influence of that alcohol is responsible? The low-wage worker that handed them the beer, the truck drivers that delivered the beer to the stadium, the brewery that made the beer? Where's the line?

If I ate at McDonalds everyday and as a result lived my life with increasingly clogged arteries and massive amounts of fat, is it McDonalds fault when I have a heart attack? Is it the owner of the individual franchise that knew me as a regular customer but served me every time I came in? Is it the bigger corporation who, in order to increase profits, allows for cheaper and cheaper, and thus less healthy, ingredients? Or is it the farmers that sell the meat to them at lower prices because it isn't up to the standard of beef other restaurants demand? Then where can you go with it, how far back? The cows have to eat, have to drink, have to have land in a state somewhere. That farmer, did he go to a bank to get a loan when he lost half his herd one year? Is the bank culpable? Is some overseas investor in that bank liable because he has a large stake in that bank? I know this sounds ridiculous, but I wonder about these things sometimes. There is a big difference, I know, to selling someone alcohol at a stadium and then not noticing that he got in his car and drove off than playing Six Degrees of Separation to liability.

I guess what my problem is is that I want to be held responsible for my own actions and no one elses. If I fuck up, get myself in a heap of trouble, I can see why I might have the impulse to want to pass the buck. People have laughed at the so-called "Twinkie Defense" claiming the Twinkies diminished his brain capacity and lead to mood swings. But the fact that most people are aware of the phrase "Twinkie defense" if not the actual arguments in the case means that we have had this idea of blaming the big, bad faceless corporations for our own shortcomings and crimes.

Often I want to rally against corporations. There are many reasons to hate them. They do whatever they can to make more money for themselves and they don't really care who they hurt in the process. But I want to take them on for what they have done. If they are dumping illegally, if they are paying workers less than what they earn, if they build a two story off shore and throw the words "World Wide Headquarters" across the face of the building so they don't have to pay taxes in the US even though they do all their business in the US, they should be held accountable for that. And its not like I don't think they should be held accountable for selling things that really are dangerous. I can get behind suing tobacco companies, for example, even though I smoke, for a variety of reasons. They produce a dangerous product and when they market it to children or try to alter studies to make it seem less dangerous, they should be sued. I think what I'm having a problem with is these acute situations. If it came out that tobacco companies could reduce the risk of cancer from smoking their products but just didn't because it would make the cost of a pack go up a few extra cents, they should be held accountable. If, however, someone fell asleep in a luxury hotel with a cigarette burning in their hand and burned the place down, that is that persons mistake. The cigarette, though it may have been the real thing that started the fire, was not put into that persons hand, into that room, and the person wasn't lulled to sleep by the cigarette, so this would be an acute event. A one time thing that is solely the person who fell asleep fault. I realize that my examples aren't great, but they are meant to illustrate my point.

It could be said that in a society we are all our brothers keeper. That we have to look out for one another to make sure that one person isn't going to do something to upset the status quo. When a company has a longer reach, they have more responsibility to watch out even more. Yet we often do forget about them, letting them get away with things that a smaller business would never be able to get away with. But we also have no problem pointing our fingers at them whenever someone does something stupid. But we only point the finger when we think there is something in it for us. That we can get some money out of them. That's why we don't find them criminally liable. They are just being sued because they have deeper pockets. And its incredibly hypocritical. It's the same reason why doctors have to pay so much in malpractice insurance. They are going to make mistakes, but people don't have to have a reason to sue someone. They say they were mistreated and they can sue. Even if they don't have a real case it gets to a point where it is cheaper to settle than to fight it in court. The perception is that doctors and hospitals can afford to get sued, so people go after them. Now, this brings in a different set of arguments about the courts and the practice of medicine that I don't really want to get into. But the point is that if doctors were all making minimum wage and hospitals run on donations alone, we wouldn't hear about doctors getting sued. For our society to really work, for people to really have a reason to look out for others and make sure that we are all doing our own small part to keep societies wheels in motion, we have to all be equally culpable. The mega-corporations should be just as likely to be sued as the small businesses. If I am walking down the street in downtown Reno and see someone who is clearly intoxicated get behind the wheel of a car I should be just as responsible for calling the police as the bartenders of the bar he just left. If there is to be any justice in the world, then we all have to take equal responsibility.