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.
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.
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