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  • #16
    Originally posted by Sunking View Post
    With any technology comes accidents and death. By the same analogy would you quit driving your car because you had a friend killed in a wreck, or quit using electricity because someone you knew house burnt down from a electrical fire.
    With all due respect, I think this is a little more severe than a house fire or a car crash. This is going to be litigated for a long time to come, and I think you can make a fair argument that there was a degree of negligence involved.

    Any technology brings with it known hazards, and it's incumbent upon the companies and people who use the technology to do so responsibly. If the courts find that Duke was irresponsible, the company deserves to be punished in line with the amount of damage they did and the degree of negligence they displayed, and also to an extent sufficient to make them want to clean up their act.

    Personally, I would go further and suggest that if there are individuals at Duke who made specific decisions which were grossly negligent (for example, to not spend money on needed maintenance), those people should also be personally liable for the decisions they made. That's not the way our system generally works today, but perhaps it should be.
    16x TenK 410W modules + 14x TenK 500W inverters

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    • #17
      Originally posted by pleppik View Post
      With all due respect, I think this is a little more severe than a house fire or a car crash. This is going to be litigated for a long time to come, and I think you can make a fair argument that there was a degree of negligence involved.
      I agree Duke is responsible. But you do not go punish yourself for it as that is just plain silly.
      MSEE, PE

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      • #18
        Originally posted by pleppik View Post
        I think you can make a fair argument that there was a degree of negligence involved. Probably but we don't have the facts or knowledge of the situation - the courts will. All I have read to date tends toward the green BS line where all big companies are bad.

        Any technology brings with it known hazards, and it's incumbent upon the companies and people who use the technology to do so responsibly.Total agreement!

        Personally, I would go further and suggest that if there are individuals at Duke who made specific decisions which were grossly negligent (for example, to not spend money on needed maintenance), those people should also be personally liable for the decisions they made. That's not the way our system generally works today, but perhaps it should be.
        The responsible individuals should be charged with a crime. The "company" did nothing wrong. If the president of a company making a mess were facing 10 or 20 years he would have a different outlook. Same goes for bankers!
        [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]

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        • #19
          Originally posted by pleppik View Post
          With all due respect, I think this is a little more severe than a house fire or a car crash. This is going to be litigated for a long time to come, and I think you can make a fair argument that there was a degree of negligence involved.

          Any technology brings with it known hazards, and it's incumbent upon the companies and people who use the technology to do so responsibly. If the courts find that Duke was irresponsible, the company deserves to be punished in line with the amount of damage they did and the degree of negligence they displayed, and also to an extent sufficient to make them want to clean up their act.

          Personally, I would go further and suggest that if there are individuals at Duke who made specific decisions which were grossly negligent (for example, to not spend money on needed maintenance), those people should also be personally liable for the decisions they made. That's not the way our system generally works today, but perhaps it should be.
          Issue with "punishing" a POCO, is that any cost they incur will be passed onto the customer one way or another. An investigation needs to be held, and the responsible individuals held accountable. Any further and it really holds the customer at bay for a companies mis-deed.

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          • #20
            Originally posted by boostinsteve View Post
            Issue with "punishing" a POCO, is that any cost they incur will be passed onto the customer one way or another. An investigation needs to be held, and the responsible individuals held accountable. Any further and it really holds the customer at bay for a companies mis-deed.
            Same with any company the government "fines" and then tells us what a wonderful job they have done. The individuals in control still receive bonus packages and suffer little if at all.

            There should be criminal penalties for criminal acts and companies can not make a criminal act - people can and do!
            [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]

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            • #21
              Originally posted by russ View Post
              Same with any company the government "fines" and then tells us what a wonderful job they have done. The individuals in control still receive bonus packages and suffer little if at all.

              There should be criminal penalties for criminal acts and companies can not make a criminal act - people can and do!
              IMHO, I think both the companies and the individuals need to face penalties as appropriate. There's a few reasons for this:
              1. Holding somene personally liable requires connecting the person to the specific negligent decision. Often times, senior executives are very skilled at insulating themselves from the specific acts which led to a foreseeable accident. For example, the CEO may set performance goals which are impossible to meet without cutting corners. In court, the CEO can plausibly argue that he did not make the decision to not fix the brakes on the truck, so he can't be held personally liable for the resulting crash. But since executives' personal wealth is often tied up in the company, this is one (very imperfect) way to punish them.
              2. Companies, their shareholders, and their customers may benefit directly from the wrongdoing of the company, and so it is appropriate to fine the company as a whole. For example, skimping on maintenance spending allows the company to show more profit and/or charge lower prices. If that leads to an environmental catastrophe, it makes perfect sense to fine the company as a whole: the shareholders and customers benefitted from the misdeed, and they will be hurt by the punishment.
              3. In the case of a major disaster, responsible individuals probably won't have the personal resources to pay for the cleanup, even if you go all the way up the management chain to the CEO and the board. The company as a whole is much more likely to have enough money for real restitution.


              The problem I see with our current system is that, in most cases, only the companies have been held responsible for negligence. I think that's because prosecutors (like most people) prefer the easy and quick resolution, and fining the company is usually faster and easier than gathering the evidence to reconstruct the decisions and figure out who to prosecute individually. But we really ought to be doing both.
              16x TenK 410W modules + 14x TenK 500W inverters

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              • #22
                Then stay with the present system - punish the company hurts the CEO? Not much in my opinion.

                In India there was a construction accident at Tata Steel where the bosses from three companies ended up spending some short time in jail. The day after they were thrown in the site boss at our site sent out a memo explaining how important safety was.

                He didn't even give a damn about the workers but he wasn't about to spend even over night in jail. He would just tell the contractors, "we need more people".

                The rules for implicating white collar workers are far too strict. If the guy should have known about it then it is his fault. Plausible deny ability is not a defense.
                [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]

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                • #23
                  So what's your opinions on also fining the rate commisions when they deny the rate hikes to cover safety/enviromental concerns. If they don't approve the cost as "an expense of doing business" the plants and companies have no funds to correct the problem.

                  WWW

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                  • #24
                    Originally posted by Wy_White_Wolf View Post
                    So what's your opinions on also fining the rate commisions when they deny the rate hikes to cover safety/enviromental concerns. If they don't approve the cost as "an expense of doing business" the plants and companies have no funds to correct the problem.

                    WWW
                    That is politics and would be fining yourself (the public) - most rate commissions are not up to the mark - they are outsmarted by the utility - from my observations.
                    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]

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                    • #25
                      So why should the company or individuals be held responsible when "Politics" forces them into a catch 22. They know there is a problem but with no funds to fix it they can do nothing.

                      WWW

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                      • #26
                        Originally posted by russ View Post
                        Then stay with the present system - punish the company hurts the CEO? Not much in my opinion.

                        In India there was a construction accident at Tata Steel where the bosses from three companies ended up spending some short time in jail. The day after they were thrown in the site boss at our site sent out a memo explaining how important safety was.

                        He didn't even give a damn about the workers but he wasn't about to spend even over night in jail. He would just tell the contractors, "we need more people".

                        The rules for implicating white collar workers are far too strict. If the guy should have known about it then it is his fault. Plausible deny ability is not a defense.
                        Russ: I've been agreeing with you all along about going after employees who are negligent. I've just been making the additional point that we have to fine the company, too.
                        16x TenK 410W modules + 14x TenK 500W inverters

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                        • #27
                          Originally posted by Wy_White_Wolf View Post
                          So why should the company or individuals be held responsible when "Politics" forces them into a catch 22. They know there is a problem but with no funds to fix it they can do nothing.

                          WWW
                          Why should someone hold up the bank or sell drugs - no difference between that and a company CEO making illegal things happen.
                          [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]

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                          • #28
                            Originally posted by russ View Post
                            Why should someone hold up the bank or sell drugs - no difference between that and a company CEO making illegal things happen.
                            Your strawman makes no sence at all.

                            The company and CEO could easily be trying to do the right thing. But the commision will not allow the funds to do the right thing. Someone holding up a bank isn't trying to do the right thing.

                            WWW

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                            • #29
                              Originally posted by Wy_White_Wolf View Post
                              Your strawman makes no sence at all.

                              The company and CEO could easily be trying to do the right thing. But the commision will not allow the funds to do the right thing. Someone holding up a bank isn't trying to do the right thing.

                              WWW
                              The commission not allowing the funds simply means you don't do it - commonly called responsibility. It is not the "right thing" if it causes damages or hurt. That is like blaming people's problems on past generations.
                              [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]

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                              • #30
                                Originally posted by russ View Post
                                The commission not allowing the funds simply means you don't do it - commonly called responsibility. It is not the "right thing" if it causes damages or hurt. That is like blaming people's problems on past generations.
                                It is a Catch 22 and the real villain is government. Employment Prevention Agency requires containment and specifies engineering standards which are constantly upgraded. Duke builds to the required standard at the time. As the containment field grows it then becomes necessary to upgrade. At that time the standards have been raised. Duke goes to the state utility commission for a rate increase to meet tougher standards and commissioners who are elected say NO. You now have a Stalemate. Who is to blame? EPA says you must, state utility commission says no, and Duke is caught in the middle of Catch 22.
                                MSEE, PE

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