Un-collared crime
Glixon, Niel
'Deciding who dun it' UN-COLLARED CRIME THE RIDDLE OF GUILTLESSNESS RECENTLY we have heard a great deal about' 'the victimless crime." It seems we now have something even more remarkable —...
...Exactly — "in so extended a causal chain...
...No one did...
...And we must concede that, in a sense, they are correct...
...Perhaps it is due to land, thousands of years in the future, on some distant star, where it will be incinerated into nonexistence...
...Somewhere along the line someone could have said, "Don't use this chemical, it's too dangerous, especially in an area so densely populated...
...Commonweal: 662...
...Elsewhere the accusing finger usually rises to point, then hesitates, waggles, and drops...
...A SmithKline statement says, "The medical judgments relating to Selacryn were complex and made in good faith...
...The president of Japan Air Lines did not wait for days of investigation to ascertain who was to blame...
...Responsibility is diffused into the corporation, and finally fades away into misdemeanors whose perpetrators must perform community service, as if they had been guilty of writing graffiti on subway walls...
...You can...
...One can easily understand how a Warren Anderson may find it difficult to identify himself as a culprit in so extended a chain — even though previous company officers point out that the U.S...
...A crime is committed, but no one did it...
...Hutton & Company, the big brokerage house...
...Because' 'proof of intent'' is required to prove a felony, and officials at the Justice Department said they weren't certain they could convince a jury of SmithKline's intent...
...The company has pleaded guilty to fourteen counts of failing to notify the FDA of adverse reactions to the drug, and twenty more counts of false labeling...
...If this sounds fishy to you, you are not alone...
...NIEL GLIXON (NielGlixon, a contributor to Dissent, Fellowship, the New York Times, Kenyon Review, andPrairie Schooner, recently left Scholastic Magazines, after nineteen years, to work on a new type of English usage handbook...
...If you're looking for intentional misconduct, there's got to be some motivation," says Patrick Korten of Justice...
...In Washington, for example, a drug (Selacryn) marketed by SmithKline as a remedy for high blood pressure "has been linked to 36 deaths and more than 500 cases of kidney damage," according to the New York Times...
...A few days after the Bhopal disaster the Times editorialized that "in so extended a causal chain blame may prove harder to fix than at first appearances...
...There was no intentional wrongdoing...
...But Japan is an exception...
...And yet, 2,000 Indians did die, and thousands more suffered...
...By contrast, when the Japanese 747 plane crashed in August killing 520 people, the largest number ever in a plane crash, there were no denials, no evasions...
...There's nobody there...
...The Justice Department, according to the Times, claims that SmithKline "did not promptly disclose the reactions to the drug, as required by law...
...Even though thirty-six people died due to corporate irresponsibility, the department let SmithKline off the hook...
...Hutton pleaded guilty not to twenty but to 29 November 1985: 661 2,000 counts — of check-kiting fraud, in this case — and these were not misdemeanor charges, but felonies...
...Seemingly it just keeps going, rocketing out of earthly orbit into space...
...The buck no longer stops here...
...they must also perform two hundred hours of community service...
...Yet Ed Meese's Justice Department decided not to prosecute individual executives...
...It doesn't even stop there...
...It seems we now have something even more remarkable — the criminal-less crime...
...Or else into nothing at all...
...Our conclusion was that there was not enough evidence...
...These were misdemeanor counts, not felonies...
...In France, the government denied responsibility for the Greenpeace bombing until newspaper probes made further denials impossible...
...Had they been felonies, the managers could have served up to three years in prison and been personally fined $10,000 — on each count...
...Startlingly, the courts have merely fined the company $100,000 and placed on probation three managers, who pleaded no contest to similar charges...
...In accord with common Japanese business practice, he tendered his resignation the next day...
...The problem is that in today's corporate structures the causal chain is always extended...
...New York Times investigators found that various company officers in India, asked who was responsible, pointed to officers above them, who set policy, or to others below them, who are responsible for day-to-day operations...
...In India, to cite another example, 2,000 people died of poison gases from a Union Carbide plant...
...Blame has been diffused into "an extended causal chain...
...And the disaster surely was preventable—the deadly methyl isocyanate was used in this manufacturing process only because it was cheaper...
...And there it will be discovered by some obscure group whose notions of justice have not yet been thoroughly corrupted...
...Someone...
...office has complete authority to control technical operations in overseas plants...
...The committee is also looking into similar cases of minimal Justice Department action in the cases of Eli Lilly & Company, another drug maker, and E.F...
...He then proceeded to visit the homes of each of the victims' kin to apologize personally...
...Since there are hundreds of homes to visit, JAL's New York office tells me he is still in the process of making these apologies...
...some one person...
...Even then, the prime minister said he couldn't name names because, "It would be unacceptable to expose military personnel who were only obeying orders...
...The Judiciary Committee will find out why...
...The idea of personal responsibility is evidently passe...
...The label had stated there was no cause-andeffect relationship between the drug and liver damage...
...Yet before Selacryn was put on sale in the U.S., the company learned that the drug had probably caused serious liver ailments among patients in France...
...Union Carbide's top officers in the U.S., including President Warren Anderson, refused to even discuss the matter with reporters, merely issuing a statement that any suggestion of blame was in the realm of speculation...
...Why weren't they charged with felonies...
...Can you imagine any reason why a company should fail to report adverse reactions...
...Strange — because the Justice Department can't...
...Says Howard M. Metzenbaum, the Ohio Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, "The Justice Department has let down the American people...
...But perhaps—just perhaps—one such buck will one day swing around the gravity field of a star, re-enter our atmosphere, and survive its descent to the planet's surface...
Vol. 112 • November 1985 • No. 21
