How can we claim 3M is criminal and should be culpable for the earplugs lawsuit, when we have only tried 19 cases in court? Shouldn't the sample set be much larger to get a scientifically accurate estimate? Who knows maybe 3M ran out of luck in the 19 samples. Would have been way better if the sample size was 10 to a 100 times that. At least, we could confidently assert something.
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Getting statistical significance might be the way more harmful than you t think. The company is facing more than 200000 plaintiffs. Each plaintiff having faced a physical injury.
Typical settlement values seen in the first round suggest seven figure settlements. Any settlement value will be scaled by a factor of 200000.
Not only Is bankruptcy certain in that case, the public nature of hearings will certainly ruin company reputation both inside and out.
Get a second round of bellwether trials as Judge Rogers suggested and try cases in waves of 500 this time.
Upside is statistical significance will improve.
Downside is company gets bankrupt was sober and in public.
The hard working scientists at 3M will leave no stone unturned in ensuring only the best of the best will reahc the customers hand. HOWEVER..., the number of earplugs produced is northwards of 1million, 10 bad cases is like 0.001%. The system might be working correclty for 99.999% of the earplugs.
Why sc--w a company for only 10 bad products amongst the millions that have been produced and sold? I have seen more servers on AWS fail overnight and result in on calls than the number of bad 3M earplugs!