how many here recall A.H. Robbins and the Dalkon Shield? Judge Miles Lord?

[MnFats]

read this --- a true judge, a fine jurist who gave executives of the company holy hell.
here are his words.
(if the case is unfamiliar, please read up. there are many instructive moments)

Lord's Justice

Miles W. Lord, Chief U.S. District Judge for Minnesota, was assigned 21 Shield cases on December 9, 1983. When the victims and Robins agreed to settle out of court some months later, Lord read the following statement to three officers of the A.H. Robins Company who under the settlement had been required to appear before him. The three officers were E. Claiborne Robins, Jr., president and chief executive officer; Carl D. Lunsford, senior vicepresident for research and development; and William A. Forrest, Jr., vice-president and general counsel.
"I did not know." "It was not me," "Look elsewhere." Time and time again, each of you has used this kind of argument in refusing to acknowledge your responsibility and in pretending to the world that the chief officers and the directors of your gigantic multinational corporation have no responsibility for the company's acts and omissions.

In a speech I gave several years ago... I suggested to the hundreds of ministers of the gospel who constitute the Minnesota Council of Churches that the accumulation of corporate wrongs is, in my mind, a manifestation of individual sin.

You, Mr. Robins, have been heard to boast many times that the growth and prosperity of this company is a direct result of its having been in the Robins family for three generations. The stamp of the Robins family is upon it. The corporation is built in the image of the Robins mentality.

You, Dr. Lunsford, as director of the company's most sensitive and important subdivision, have violated every ethical precept to which every doctor under your supervision must pledge as he gives the oath of Hippocrates and assumes the mantle of one who would help and cure and nurture unto the physical needs of the populace.

You, Mr. Forrest, are a lawyer-one who, upon finding his client in trouble, should counsel and guide him along a course which will comport with the legal, moral, and ethical principles which must bind us all. You have not brought honor to your profession. `4r. Forrest.

Gentlemen, the results d these activities and attitudes on your part have been catastrophic. Today as you sit here attempting once more to extricate yourselves from the legal consequences of your acts, none of you has faced up to the fact that more than nine thousand women have made claims that they gave up part of their womanhood so that your company might prosper. It is alleged that others gave their lives so you might so prosper. And there stand behind them legions more who have been injured but who have not sought relief in the courts of this land.

If one poor young man were, by some act of his-without authority or consent-to inflict such damage upon one woman, he would be jailed for a good portion of the rest of his life. And yet your company without warning to women invaded their bodies by the millions and caused them injuries by the thousands. And when the time came for these women to make their claims against your company, you attacked their characters. You inquired into their sexual practices and into the identity of their sex partners. You... ruined families and reputations and careers-in order to intimidate those who would raise their voices against you. You introduced issues that had no relationship whatsoever to the fact that you planted in the bodies of these women instruments of death, of mutilation, of disease.

Mr. Forrest, you have told me that you are working with members of the Congress of the United States to ask them to find a way of forgiving you from punitive damages which might otherwise be imposed. Yet the profits of your company continue to mount. Your last financial report boasts of new records for sales and earnings, with a profit of more than $58 million in 1983. And all the while, insofar as this court is able to determine you three men and your company still engage in the selfsame course of wrongdoing in which you originally commenced. Until such time as your company indicates that it is willing to cease and desist this deception and seek out and advise victims, your remonstrances to Congress and to the courts of this country are indeed hollow and cynical. The company has not suffered, nor have you men personally. You are collectively being enriched by million of dollars each year.

Mr. Robins, Mr. Forest, Dr. Lunsford: You have not been rehabilitated. Under your direction, your company has in fact continued to allow women, tens of thousands of women, to wear this device a deadly depth charge in their wombs, ready to explode at any time... The only conceivable reasons you have not recalled this product are that it would hurt your balance sheet and alert women who already have been harmed that you may be liable for their injuries. You have taken the bottom line as your guiding beacon, and the low road as your route. This is corporate irresponsibility at its meanest.

... The policy of delay and obfuscation practiced by your lawyers in courts throughout this country has made it possible for you and your insurance company, Aetna Casualty and Surety Company, to delay the payment of these claims for such a long period that the interest you earn in the interim covers the cost of these cases. You, in essence, pay nothing out of your pocket to settle these cases...

Your company seeks to segment and fragment the litigation of these cases nationwide. The courts of this country are now burdened with more than three thousand Dalkon Shield cases. The sheer number of claims and the dilatory tactics used by your company's attorneys clog court calendars and consume vast amounts of judicial and jury time...

Another of your callous legal tactics is to force women of little means to withstand the onslaught of your well-financed, nationwide team of attorneys, and to default if they cannot keep pace. You target your worst tactics for the meek and the poor.

...If this were a case in equity, I would order that your company make an effort to locate each and every woman who still wears this device and recall your product. But this court does not have the power to do so. I must therefore resort to moral persuasion and a personal appeal to each of you. Mr. Robins, Mr. Forrest, and Dr. Lunsford: You are the people with the power to recall. You are the corporate conscience.

Please in the name of humanity, lift your eyes above the bottom line. You, the men in charge, must surely have hearts and souls and consciences...

Please, gentlemen, give consideration to tracking down the victims and sparing them the agony that will surely be theirs.