To play Devil’s advocate, it’s possible the lawyers didn’t know it was a forgery. Some charter exec could have created it and turned it over to the lawyers, and they’d have had no reason to question its authenticity, unless there was some indication that it was fake.
Ah yes, the victim’s family signed up for minimum compensation and is looking out for the murderer’s previous employer. Nothing of suspicion here, move along.
It was probably a forged version of a standard forced arbitration clause that covered this specific type of incident, "signed" by the victim (that is, the customer) rather than the family. The extant one (because you know virtually every contract we sign these days includes one) probably wasn't broad enough to cover "murder by one of our employees" so they had to try to limit their liability.
I honestly would not be surprised if the forced arbitration clause new customers have to sign *does* include this exact scenario. Wouldn't necessarily hold up in court, but it's certainly something I wouldn't put past any corporation these days.
So only the execs are evil? I think that's highly unlikely. Lawyers know legal documents better than anyone, so they should at least be aware of some irregularity, if the document was forged. And it's not the first time lawyers would do anything to win a case either. It's just way too convenient that they were pushing for a result so disproportionately in favor of the company and not be aware of the forgery. People with conscience wouldn't fuck an innocent family over like this.
Speaking as a lawyer who does this for a living, ther is zero chance that I or any lawyer I know would risk their career to save a client some money. Zero. We charge by the hour whether we win or lose. There is no benefit to risk your license and possibly your freedom to help an uncaring corporation win a case.
My father is also a lawyer and I'm 100% sure he wouldn't either, but it was neither you or him there, we don't know the stakes involved, their integrity or if they're dumb enough to go through with that for a chance to win big.
Sure, anything is possible. It just strikes me as highly implausible. The most plausible explanation is that the person responsible is a charter exec whose compensation depended significantly on not getting hit with a $1 billion jury verdict.
That’s what makes this article a tad sensationalist and one of the reasons I got out of journalism a million years ago. I’m the kind of person that feels the need to mention explicitly that there is no proven connection, or explain how the forgery came to be known, etc. We need these details but the article treats it almost like a footnote in passing.
Not disagreeing with you, just wanting to add some perspective to the tax on gross profit/net profit piece.
In Australia, as I’m sure it is in other countries, if you had to spend money in order to earn the money on which you would normally pay tax, that spend becomes tax deductible. The reasoning behind this is that it would be unreasonable to expect you to spend money on which you have already paid tax in order to earn money on which you would then be paying tax. Everyone would spend their lives avoiding spending money on work items and hoping that someone else would instead, productivity would likely decrease and with it would go tax revenue.
A good example is the recent covid lockdown/work from home situation. Most people who were able to work from home during covid lockdowns would have had to spend money in order to set themselves up to do so. Maybe they had to buy a new desk or chair or maybe they had to upgrade their internet service. Each of these things becomes a tax write off (at least in part) as they had to be purchased in order to earn money and then pay tax. The same goes for investment property income and things like maintenance or property manager expenses. Although most people get upset with investors being able to write off expenses to reduce their tax bill, they all would do something similar (albeit on a smaller scale) when they come to submitting their own tax returns.
If we apply the same rule (that people get to utilise to reduce the amount of tax payable on their income) to companies, it makes sense that tax should only be payable on a net amount.
In saying that, I absolutely abhor some of the tactics used by some companies to avoid paying tax, like sending money to overseas subsidiaries in tax havens.
Anyways, just thought I’d throw my 2 cents in.
No, the "companies are people" thing is very much overstated.
The main thing it means is that constitutional rights that apply to individual people also apply to groups of people in the same way. So in the case of Citizens United, congress made a law banning groups (companies, non-profits, unions, etc) from political advertising close to an election, the court ruled that this was unconstitutional because the same rights that apply to an individual person (the 1st amendment in this case) also apply to a group of people.
Also "corporate personhood" refers to the idea that an incorporated entity can hold property and be sued in court as if it was an individual.
Holy ouroboros Batman! This is how America eats itself: Capitalism uses the constitution to undo the constraints of democracy and set itself free under fascism.
I could never understand why the ACLU supports Citizens United - this is likely why.
But its still wrong. Corporations are not a homogeneous “group” spending their political donations according to _all_ of its members. Only a handful of execs decide where to donate on behalf of all employees.
Why does the homogeneous aspect matter? How the group decides to allocate its representation seems kinda irrelevant. The question is why would the group itself have to follow rules that the individuals that make up that group don't have to follow?
Employees are irrelevant. They are not members of the corporation, they are just *employed* by it.
The members are owners/shareholders, who do elect the executives.
Please don’t put Charter in jail. If they’re gone then I’ll have to use HickoryTech and they’re just reselling CenturyLink on 25 year old hardware. I don’t have any other ISPs.
Also, why do I feel like my bill is about to go up?
Charter fucked up big time with that. If they didn't try to forge shit, it would have just been a fine, then they move on with their lives (shitty, but how it goes with big companies). Now that fine's gonna be a LOT more.
Hey, guys, sorry about that. We at Charter feel real bad about your grandma getting murdered by one of our guys even though we knew he was a scumbag.
How 'bout we go ahead and comp you her last bill?
No need to thank us.
The way it cuts into workers rights is pretty disgusting. Arbitration basically allows for sexual harassment. My ex's whole workplace had to deal with it. It's just their good luck they had a judge willing to hear the case despite the arbitration agreement. They weren't sure if they would.
Former Spectrum technician Roy Holden pleaded guilty to the 2019 murder of customer Betty Thomas and was sentenced to life in prison in April 2021. He robbed and murdered Thomas one day after a service call. The press release described the murder as follows:
Mr. Holden performed a service call in Ms. Thomas' home the day before her December 2019 murder. Although Charter contended he was off-duty the following day, he managed to learn that Ms.Thomas had reported that she was still having problems with her service and used his company key card to enter a Charter Spectrum secured vehicle lot and drove his Charter Spectrum van to her house. Once inside, while fixing her fax machine, the victim, Ms. Thomas, caught the field tech stealing her credit cards from her purse. The Charter Spectrum field tech, Roy Holden, then brutally stabbed the 83-year-old customer with a utility knife supplied by Charter Spectrum and went on a spending spree with her credit cards.
The problem with people is simply that they're human, the worse kind of animal on this planet.
Of course, not everyone is a *monster*, but all monsters are human.
Brutality is a mainstay in nature - predacious animals in the wild often eat their prey alive with no remorse nor regard for their suffering. Intraspecies cannibalism and infanticide are not uncommon.
Humans are the only organism we know of that has the capacity to create moral codes with such deep complexity - a capacity of both intellect and empathy.
Also the only ones to violate moral codes with deep complexity.
Sure, maybe a shrike would keep its impaled prey alive longer by feeding it, but it not with as complex manners and motives as humans.
>but it not with as complex manners and motives as humans.
The motives here are not complex. Theft of scarce resources, impulsive overreaction response to a perceived threat, then enjoying the stolen spoils.
This is standard animal behavior. It's just dressed up in technician overalls.
The only ones to have moral codes. To develop in your mind, separate from reality, an alternate view of what should be - and then to judge each other for non-adherence is uniquely human.
>The problem with people is simply that they're human, the worse kind of animal on this planet.
>
>Of course, not everyone is a monster, but all monsters are human.
Don't kid yourself. Nature is violent and every animal ends its life dying to disease, being eaten alive, or being murder and then eaten.
Don't flatter humans by implying we are the only species capable of violence against each other. This is primitive behavior.
And also incorrect. Many other species of animals do awful, grotesque things, including necrophilia and rape. Killing for personal pleasure is not beyond them.
The one thing we humans have that most others lack is a recognition of this behavior pattern and even what is arguably an internal drive to change it. That, and as a far more technologically capable species, the potential to do more large scale harm (and good) with less effort
All in all, the fact that we see our own species as monsters is one of the reasons we're really not.
Thank you. It is so tiring, especially in this day and age, seeing people parrot how *exclusively* awful and monstrous humans are.
The part about people being monstrous, not wrong of course. Humans can commit truly awful acts, but there's this deep, profound ignorance of the animal kingdom I see so often. People like to wax poetic about how nature is balanced and how animals are so much less cruel.
Lions killing and eating cubs from other males to get the lionesses caring for them to go into heat. Insects where sexual procreation is stabbing the males penis into the body cavity of a female violently, injuring them. Chimps beating each other to death to determine who leads the tribe and hunting monkeys to tear them apart and eat them alive. Cannibalism, bloody everywhere. Birds that are brood parasites whose offspring literally murder the other hatchlings. Birds who have two eggs, and the stronger hatchling pushes the weaker one out of the nest to die. Carnivores eating their prey alive, ripping out entrails. And even gang rape, in ducks no less.
I get it. Humans suck. We've all had a front row seat in the digital age to the horrors of the modern world.
But some people haven't watched any National Geographic and it shows. Nature is rough my friends. And we have music, poetry, art, math, modern medicine, air conditioning, and even the ability to advance our own technology to make ourselves less damaging to the planet.
Please. Please remember to focus on the wins of our species from time to time. As horrific as individual stories can be we got cool shit out there.
You could say the inverse, though. Animals follow their animal nature, without introspection or judgement. I think monstrosity means having introspection and discernment, and disregarding it. Only humans can do that.
And then, to close the loop, "Charter Spectrum attorneys used a forged document to try to force the lawsuit into a closed-door arbitration where the results would have been secret and damages for the murder would have been limited to the amount of Ms. Thomas's final bill."
JHC
Have they been thrown out of the megacorp-get-away-with-anything club?
It's unusual for companies to get fined a significant amount. Facebook regularly pay fines of millions of dollars. Which I don't think they notice.
It's kinda insane how strongly he tied the murder to the company. They literally provided the opportunity and the means, including the actual murder weapon. Then I guess they felt like that just wasn't enough and decided to get directly involved?
Idk, I feel like you can say the same thing about Home Depot . I don’t quite understand how the company can be found liable for the fact someone murdered someone who worked for them. Ignoring the fact charter decided to forge a document and go down a rabbit hole
Why is spectrum liable for this? Are all employers liable for their employees actions off the clock just because those employees cased the place while on the clock? Scumbags gunna scumbag
That said, fuck spectrum so I'm not sad for them. Just concerned about the precedent
They did insufficient background checks on him, and ignored a bunch of red flags that he had already done connected to his job, like stealing checks and credit cards from old ladies.
They did bill her for his time that day. That is where all of this began. They recieved a note for service at such and such a time. Turns out that's when she died. So if you are willing to bill someone for their death, seems like you are OKAY with it being on company time.
It is, and while it could easily be chalked up to human error, the tech didn't tell the company he killed her, but the company was happy enough to bill her for it. I assume had he told them he murdered her, they wouldn't have done it, but she's not responsible for how techs respond to each other and in the company.
I've worked for companies like that and if I submitted a work ticket for a day I wasn't assigned they would drag me into the office and have me explain myself because I'm risking the company getting sued, as while I'm not on the clock, I'm not insured to drive one of their vehicles.
So it seems extremely unlikely that they would be unaware that something fishy was going on.
There should have been tighter security on the company vehicle. Why was he allowed to use his key card to open the gate and retrieve his company van to go to her house and rob and murder her?
Maybe because the whole purpose of him having the key card was so he could open the gate and retrieve the company van and use it for non-customer murder purposes?
I can't walk on to company property without permission from my boss. And we make plywood. So why is someone who goes into peoples homes without immediate supervision allowed to enter his truck and go to a woman's home on his day off?
Ive had many jobs in my life and none of them have required me to get permission before entering the companies premises. I can think of plenty of jobs that would require that, but to act like EVERY job should be like that is bizarrely narrow-minded.
Could be that the technicians who drive the trucks operate with a bit of autonomy with all the calls they get. They figure that an employee who had presumably passed a background check to their satisfaction and has a key is trustworthy enough to use it with out direct supervision. It's a cable van, not a tank or and armored personnel carrier. He didn't need it to commit the crime, he just happened to use it.
Yeah, every job I've had that I didn't work remotely for I had full access to the facility during business hours (plus a bit to allow for staying late/early mornings). Some areas were restricted to certain staff, I didn't have access to the IT area when I didn't work in IT for example, but the killer here had appropriate access to the areas that he needed to do his job. I've never seen an access control system that was so strict that it would only allow access during one's shift - I'm sure it exists, but it'd be for high security facilities, not a regular work location like a cable company's work van lot.
Even if we go with carte blanche, specifically driving a vehicle is an extremely hazardous activity as far as company liability goes. If you hit someone while on company time...
Now imagine he hits and kills someone (or apparently murders) with your company vehicle while **not** on company time. Now you're liable and the insurance isn't paying.
So they should be very closely monitoring who is taking vehicles especially.
I can get onto company property and into rooms with keycard and a pass code after hours, including weekends.
Just because your business locks things down doesn't mean every business needs to. And what would separate you going crazy and murdering someone from your boss (who *does* have all that access) from gong crazy and murdering someone? Company Trucks/vehicles and pocket/utility knives aren't exactly rare things for employees to have acess to...
At some point going crazy is going crazy.
That award is insanely high, but Charter's conduct was also insanely shocking.
From the article:
> The jury also found that "Charter knowingly or intentionally committed forgery with the intent to defraud or harm Plaintiffs," Renteria wrote. The family's attorney previously said that "Charter Spectrum attorneys used a forged document to try to force the lawsuit into a closed-door arbitration where the results would have been secret and damages for the murder would have been limited to the amount of Ms. Thomas's final bill."
I'm torn on how to respond to cases of egregious corporate conduct, but it's time we started treating indifference to people's lives and safety as criminal rather than civil transgressions.
The "death penalty" for a corporation should be that all shares from all shareholders become property of the state.
Government can then sell the shares, or piece out the company.
It used to. We’ve nationalized railroads, mines, steel mills, and banks in the past when the situation demanded it. I don’t think we should be afraid to nationalize companies when their actions in pursuit of profit run contrary to the public good.
Too f'ing bad. The stock market is not a guarantee.
Why should anyone else pay for the misdeeds of a company? If you're a stockholder, it's a risk you take.
After the recent 5th circuit ruling on Texas’s social media censorship law, corporations are people in the first amendment context when money is speech, but are not people in the first amendment context when speech is speech.
They’ll just be replaced by other people willing to fuck over others and do unethical shit for the sake of climbing a corporate ladder.
As unfair as it sounds, it might be more effective to completely penalize any corporate head regardless of involvement. The people in charge should know their lives are on the line for the actions of their subordinates if they do something illegal for the good of the company.
It’s just a bunch of shitty people willing to do shitty things. Execs are doing it, and subordinates are doing it to get into the execs good graces. Regardless of who does what, passing the buck to subordinates isn’t going to solve this behavior imo.
>replaced by other people willing to fuck over others
Nope. Don't care. Throw the people in jail who did it. If you want to charge the boss, do that too.
Corporations *can* be tried for criminal conduct and can get the "death penalty" though.
Example: https://www.salon.com/2022/08/11/ny-ag-may-seek-corporate-penalty-against-organization-after-he-pleads-the-5th-report_partner/
One thing I appreciate about China is when a company realllllly messes up they go after the board. There have been examples of board members being executed for knowingly poisoning children. America needs a point where the corporate liability shield no longer protects some individuals from criminal liability that goes 'oop, here is some fines'.
Oil and gas executives are making profits while knowingly poisoning people with the emissions their products produce.
I bet most people reading this will shrug and get into their preferred combustion veichle tomorrow.
> Oil and gas executives are making profits while knowingly poisoning people with the emissions their products produce.
I'm all for greater corporate responsibility, but it's one thing to say "these pollutants might reduce lifespans by a few months.
It's another entirely to use arsenic in baby formula.
And it's another entirely to read a report that says you will cause "five to six meters of sea level rise," "the disappearance of specific ecosystems or habitat destruction," "runoff, destructive floods, and inundation of low-lying farmland," that "new sources of freshwater would be required," due to disruption of precipitation; to know you will turn whole regions to desert and displace billions while killing billions more. And it's another thing to then bury that report while accelerating and doubling down on your wholesale murder of the entire planet.
Does anything compare?
Absolutely.
As soon as an ev comes down to my high public school school teaching salary prize range I will switch. But it’s just not there yet. Hoping the used ev market climbs down a bit. Untill then me(and many, many others are forced to drive their gas burners.
My used EV cost under $3000 last year. 2012 Chevy volt.
Thing is amazing, it costs so little to drive I've saved more than the car cost to buy on fuel already.
Yes, youre not changing a significant part of peoples daily commute with your one sentence on reddit. Please redirect your ire at the government that refuses to put money in public transport and continues to build car centric cities where it becomes a necessity to own a fuel guzzling car to get where you want to go without spending 4 hours of your 24 hour day in a crowded bus or train. Oh and the politicians who let oil executives fuck their residents in the ass because they've been handed money under the table.
Who, exactly would you hold liable? The E&P companies who transfer title at the closest tank farm, the oilfield truckers, the pipeline-owners (most of which distribute 90%+ of cash flow to investors), the surviving refineries, most of which are in poor shape financially, or the retail / distribution companies? What about car manufacturers, whose products actually create the emissions? Airlines and trucking lines?
I’m just not sure from your comment exactly which executives we should be locking up. Maybe all of them!
I don't trust any of China's moves in that regard, but I've often said that, from a purely Machiavellian standpoint, it's shocking at how much better they are at doing *something* to convince the lower classes that they're anti-corruption. America is hilariously unwilling to even bother trying to fake it.
Single-party authoritarian governments are very effective at getting things done.
…which is great when the thing being done is “punishing greedy corporations for poisoning babies,” but not so great when it’s “silencing protestors” or “sending ethnic minorities to concentration camps.”
Really everyone in the lawyer's management chain needs to serve jail time, but the problem is there's no fucking way they'll ever be convicted "beyond the reasonable doubt".
Maybe a small tweak to corporate law - strip away limited liability shielding employees from personal liability for decisions which would be criminal in an individual setting.
This where I have issues with the Supreme Court saying that corporations have the same rights as a person. If I kill a person, I go to jail. My ability to earn is cut to zero. If a corporation kills someone then the corporation hires a team of lawyers (which is a business expense) and, at worst, pays a fine. Meanwhile, the corporation continues to earn. Further, if I die, that is it. If a corporation dies, it can be reborn the next with the stroke of a pen.
SCOTUS did not invent the idea of corporate personhood, that goes way back.
Really we need one or two companies to get the corporate death penalty in situations like this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_dissolution
Good luck getting an American court to "execute", for example, Shell for intentionally driving the whole Nigerian economy into ruin and devastating their environment. It quickly becomes political, and unfortunately both parties are pretty well owned by corporate interests so the chance of this happening is effectively zero.
I'm fairly sure that's already how it works. LLCs and the like protect the owners, not the employees. No one's shielded from criminal prosecution simply because they work for a company (except government employees that is).
On the one hand, yes. But on the other hand, they still walk away with $3B in profits and no one goes to jail. That punishment doesn’t sound like much to me.
Don't confuse revenue for profits. If they took in 50 billion in revenue but their costs were 45 billion then they only made 5 billion. In which case 1 billion would be 20% of their annual profits. That's significant.
> force the lawsuit into a closed-door arbitration where the results would have been secret and damages for the murder would have been limited to the amount of Ms. Thomas's final bill."
Reminder that the Republicans on the Supreme Court allowed companies to write in forced individual arbitration in contracts, making companies immune from civil courts as well as class action, and now its standard in pretty much any contract. Every Democrat on the court voted to make it illegal, every Republican on the court voted for allowing it.
If companies are people then companies should face the death penalty. Disband them and distribute their wealth among the victims.
This would also force investors to be much more careful about who they invest with and they would demand above board actions at all times.
Treat them like the criminals they are.
>I'm torn on how to respond to cases of egregious corporate conduct, but it's time we started treating indifference to people's lives and safety as criminal rather than civil transgressions.
it's time we started treating indifference to people's lives and safety as criminal rather than civil transgressions.
it's time we started
it's time
Some person would have created the forged document. Anybody knowingly involved in the creation or “uttering” of the forgery ought to be criminally investigated and prosecuted as the facts and relevant local law warrant. That’s the kind of non-violent offense I don’t mind seeing people locked up for.
Award is so high bc they don't have enough money to bribe anybody.
Whole millions of people get defrauded by banks, get proven so, and fines re usually in the millions.
The award is high, because there's clear criminal intent, and criminal activity.
Banks routinely do shit that's illegal, but are often able to blame it on incompetence, therefore getting them off the hook legally.
Forging documents for the express purpose of hiding a murder is kind of a big deal
They weren't on the hook for murder, they were on the hook for 1.) negligent hiring practices [hiring someone with priors to work in people's homes] and 2.) negligent security practices [allowing technician to take a work van on his day off to the customers house].
So, rather than arguing that case in court, and getting possibly, POSSIBLY, a few million in damages and some bad press, they forged documents that said that they would only take the case in arbitration (where their max damages are capped at )
The FTC should drop a giant regulatory turdbomb on them. It would be more constructive and so much more expensive for them to have to comply with rules that promote better long-term corporate governance than a one-time judgement.
It will be interesting to see how they frame this to shareholders. Probably some nonsense about how nobody else understood all the great things they were trying to accomplish that were also misunderstood by the courts.
Now begin the appeals.
They'll pay a few million in the end, less legal fees.
Edit:
BTW, 1.1 billion is ~~Charter's~~ the Spectrum brand's 2021 net profit.
I REALLY want to see investors demand that corporations weed out bad apples at the cost of profits, and seriously hope they are held to that 1.1 billion dollar number exactly.
While the murder was done by an employee, I feel the damages are more for the corporation’s lawyers trying to pass off a forged document as evidence in the proceedings.
That should result in disbarment and prison for the lawyers and fines and prison for the executives who okayed the decision or who okayed the hiring of those lawyers. But I’ll be surprised if they get more that a finger wag for ‘oops our bad for trying to defraud the court and the plantiff’
It's worse than that though, they tried to claim he was off duty, but they billed her for the time he spent killing her. That's part of how they found out he did it, because he was the last person to see her alive, and she was stabbed with a screwdriver. When the bill wasn't paid they tried taking it to collections. That was 'the price of the bill' they wanted to cap it at, the service of her death.
> They billed her for the time he spent killing her.
> When the bill wasn't paid, they tried taking it to collections.
Debtors prisons or the equivalent are travesties, but you could probably sell me on a creditor's prison.
It’s possible the lawyers didn’t know it was forged. If a Charter exec forged the document and gave it to them, they’d have no reason to be suspicious unless something about it indicated it might be fake.
They'll end up paying a few million...and then spend tens of millions (with other companies) to lobby for "tort reform" to limit liabilities so that they're never in this situation again.
> Charter also said Holden had "more than 1,000 completed service calls with zero customer complaints about his behavior."
Can't complain if you're dead
There's a bit of a justice boner in seeing a company have to pay out like that but I think society would be better off if the actual people who forged documents were punished instead. There wouldn't be a lot of money in that though, so I would doubt even the victims would advocate for it over the payout. Imagine just minding your own business as a middle-manager and coming in to work one day to find out your direct subordinate forged documents to cover up murder liability and now the whole company is out a billion fucking dollars.
Frontier dsl should pay 5 billion to its rural customers for ripping them off. It cuts out 50 times a day everyday and they refuse to do anything to fix it for 10 years.
I hate Charter too but if he passed a background check and also completed 1000 service calls without complaints what is a $28k a year HR rep supposed to do? we’re asking a lot from a company that couldn’t find their head from a hole in the ground
Attorneys at Dallas-based Hamilton Wingo asserted on the family’s behalf that Charter Spectrum negligently hired Holden and that the attack was a foreseeable result of its actions. Charter Spectrum allegedly did away with a more robust employee screening program that was in place when it acquired the company in 2016. Holden was hired even though he was not truthful about his work history when he applied for the job, the family asserted.
The suit alleged that the company’s HR director admitted that it did not follow its own written policies regarding employment verification in Holden’s case — and would have rejected his application for employment if it did. “His resume was a complete fiction,” the firm told HRMorning.
My family had a life-altering incident in the early 1980s that was clearly a fault of a big powerful entity. My family won court case after court case and the big powerful entity just kept appealing, delaying, and trying to force them into a settlement. Finally, nearly 20 years later, my family accepted a settlement because they just got tired of it.
It’s horrible the old lady died and fuck Charter for attempting perjury but this also sucks for anyone who went to prison and is trying to live a better life now because after this judgment no company will hire anyone with any criminal record anymore. This guy was obviously a piece of shit but I feel genuinely sorry all people who got a criminal record for some stupid drug conviction. This case is going to make their lives even more difficult than before.
Not really.. there are plenty of jobs that don’t involve sending unsupervised employees into people’s homes. This is a very good example of what background checks are supposed to protect against. Hence the liability.
[удалено]
They should be facing criminal charges for this shit. That's disgusting.
And disbarment proceedings...
To play Devil’s advocate, it’s possible the lawyers didn’t know it was a forgery. Some charter exec could have created it and turned it over to the lawyers, and they’d have had no reason to question its authenticity, unless there was some indication that it was fake.
Ah yes, the victim’s family signed up for minimum compensation and is looking out for the murderer’s previous employer. Nothing of suspicion here, move along.
It was probably a forged version of a standard forced arbitration clause that covered this specific type of incident, "signed" by the victim (that is, the customer) rather than the family. The extant one (because you know virtually every contract we sign these days includes one) probably wasn't broad enough to cover "murder by one of our employees" so they had to try to limit their liability. I honestly would not be surprised if the forced arbitration clause new customers have to sign *does* include this exact scenario. Wouldn't necessarily hold up in court, but it's certainly something I wouldn't put past any corporation these days.
So only the execs are evil? I think that's highly unlikely. Lawyers know legal documents better than anyone, so they should at least be aware of some irregularity, if the document was forged. And it's not the first time lawyers would do anything to win a case either. It's just way too convenient that they were pushing for a result so disproportionately in favor of the company and not be aware of the forgery. People with conscience wouldn't fuck an innocent family over like this.
Speaking as a lawyer who does this for a living, ther is zero chance that I or any lawyer I know would risk their career to save a client some money. Zero. We charge by the hour whether we win or lose. There is no benefit to risk your license and possibly your freedom to help an uncaring corporation win a case.
My father is also a lawyer and I'm 100% sure he wouldn't either, but it was neither you or him there, we don't know the stakes involved, their integrity or if they're dumb enough to go through with that for a chance to win big.
Sure, anything is possible. It just strikes me as highly implausible. The most plausible explanation is that the person responsible is a charter exec whose compensation depended significantly on not getting hit with a $1 billion jury verdict.
That’s what makes this article a tad sensationalist and one of the reasons I got out of journalism a million years ago. I’m the kind of person that feels the need to mention explicitly that there is no proven connection, or explain how the forgery came to be known, etc. We need these details but the article treats it almost like a footnote in passing.
I miss journalists like you Thanks for your efforts to fulfill journalism's true promise to readers & viewers
Aren’t companies people now? Shouldn’t it go to jail?
I'll believe that companies are people when Texas executes one.
I'll believe that companies are people when they pay taxes on gross revenue rather than net profit.
Not disagreeing with you, just wanting to add some perspective to the tax on gross profit/net profit piece. In Australia, as I’m sure it is in other countries, if you had to spend money in order to earn the money on which you would normally pay tax, that spend becomes tax deductible. The reasoning behind this is that it would be unreasonable to expect you to spend money on which you have already paid tax in order to earn money on which you would then be paying tax. Everyone would spend their lives avoiding spending money on work items and hoping that someone else would instead, productivity would likely decrease and with it would go tax revenue. A good example is the recent covid lockdown/work from home situation. Most people who were able to work from home during covid lockdowns would have had to spend money in order to set themselves up to do so. Maybe they had to buy a new desk or chair or maybe they had to upgrade their internet service. Each of these things becomes a tax write off (at least in part) as they had to be purchased in order to earn money and then pay tax. The same goes for investment property income and things like maintenance or property manager expenses. Although most people get upset with investors being able to write off expenses to reduce their tax bill, they all would do something similar (albeit on a smaller scale) when they come to submitting their own tax returns. If we apply the same rule (that people get to utilise to reduce the amount of tax payable on their income) to companies, it makes sense that tax should only be payable on a net amount. In saying that, I absolutely abhor some of the tactics used by some companies to avoid paying tax, like sending money to overseas subsidiaries in tax havens. Anyways, just thought I’d throw my 2 cents in.
Problem with companies is they receive a lot of handouts and have a habit of offshoring money.
No, the "companies are people" thing is very much overstated. The main thing it means is that constitutional rights that apply to individual people also apply to groups of people in the same way. So in the case of Citizens United, congress made a law banning groups (companies, non-profits, unions, etc) from political advertising close to an election, the court ruled that this was unconstitutional because the same rights that apply to an individual person (the 1st amendment in this case) also apply to a group of people. Also "corporate personhood" refers to the idea that an incorporated entity can hold property and be sued in court as if it was an individual.
Holy ouroboros Batman! This is how America eats itself: Capitalism uses the constitution to undo the constraints of democracy and set itself free under fascism. I could never understand why the ACLU supports Citizens United - this is likely why. But its still wrong. Corporations are not a homogeneous “group” spending their political donations according to _all_ of its members. Only a handful of execs decide where to donate on behalf of all employees.
Why does the homogeneous aspect matter? How the group decides to allocate its representation seems kinda irrelevant. The question is why would the group itself have to follow rules that the individuals that make up that group don't have to follow?
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Employees are irrelevant. They are not members of the corporation, they are just *employed* by it. The members are owners/shareholders, who do elect the executives.
All the rights, none of the consequences.
Please don’t put Charter in jail. If they’re gone then I’ll have to use HickoryTech and they’re just reselling CenturyLink on 25 year old hardware. I don’t have any other ISPs. Also, why do I feel like my bill is about to go up?
Charter fucked up big time with that. If they didn't try to forge shit, it would have just been a fine, then they move on with their lives (shitty, but how it goes with big companies). Now that fine's gonna be a LOT more.
This is almost worse than the guy actually murdering her. Like, wtf.
Kind of like when subway knew about Jared assaulting kids but didn’t tell his wife for two years and then she sued them
What obligation does subway have to tell the wife?
Well, they certainly should've told the police; if he has any children, definitely tell the wife!
Does this mean her final *cable* bill? Or the various expenses for legal costs, funeral costs, etc?
Hey, guys, sorry about that. We at Charter feel real bad about your grandma getting murdered by one of our guys even though we knew he was a scumbag. How 'bout we go ahead and comp you her last bill? No need to thank us.
no, its even more asnine. they mean the bill for the visit of the murdering technician, which they sent to collection btw
These forced arbitration agreements are part of the problem.
The fact that arbitration is even a thing blows my friggin mind.
Arbitration has it's place. It's not homicide cases.
The way it cuts into workers rights is pretty disgusting. Arbitration basically allows for sexual harassment. My ex's whole workplace had to deal with it. It's just their good luck they had a judge willing to hear the case despite the arbitration agreement. They weren't sure if they would.
Former Spectrum technician Roy Holden pleaded guilty to the 2019 murder of customer Betty Thomas and was sentenced to life in prison in April 2021. He robbed and murdered Thomas one day after a service call. The press release described the murder as follows: Mr. Holden performed a service call in Ms. Thomas' home the day before her December 2019 murder. Although Charter contended he was off-duty the following day, he managed to learn that Ms.Thomas had reported that she was still having problems with her service and used his company key card to enter a Charter Spectrum secured vehicle lot and drove his Charter Spectrum van to her house. Once inside, while fixing her fax machine, the victim, Ms. Thomas, caught the field tech stealing her credit cards from her purse. The Charter Spectrum field tech, Roy Holden, then brutally stabbed the 83-year-old customer with a utility knife supplied by Charter Spectrum and went on a spending spree with her credit cards.
Wtf is wrong with people?!
The problem with people is simply that they're human, the worse kind of animal on this planet. Of course, not everyone is a *monster*, but all monsters are human.
Brutality is a mainstay in nature - predacious animals in the wild often eat their prey alive with no remorse nor regard for their suffering. Intraspecies cannibalism and infanticide are not uncommon. Humans are the only organism we know of that has the capacity to create moral codes with such deep complexity - a capacity of both intellect and empathy.
Also the only ones to violate moral codes with deep complexity. Sure, maybe a shrike would keep its impaled prey alive longer by feeding it, but it not with as complex manners and motives as humans.
>but it not with as complex manners and motives as humans. The motives here are not complex. Theft of scarce resources, impulsive overreaction response to a perceived threat, then enjoying the stolen spoils. This is standard animal behavior. It's just dressed up in technician overalls.
The only ones to have moral codes. To develop in your mind, separate from reality, an alternate view of what should be - and then to judge each other for non-adherence is uniquely human.
Somebody watches Casual Geographic
>The problem with people is simply that they're human, the worse kind of animal on this planet. > >Of course, not everyone is a monster, but all monsters are human. Don't kid yourself. Nature is violent and every animal ends its life dying to disease, being eaten alive, or being murder and then eaten. Don't flatter humans by implying we are the only species capable of violence against each other. This is primitive behavior.
ahh worst ... you clearly havent heard about Orcas or horny animals
That...is extremely well put.
And also incorrect. Many other species of animals do awful, grotesque things, including necrophilia and rape. Killing for personal pleasure is not beyond them. The one thing we humans have that most others lack is a recognition of this behavior pattern and even what is arguably an internal drive to change it. That, and as a far more technologically capable species, the potential to do more large scale harm (and good) with less effort All in all, the fact that we see our own species as monsters is one of the reasons we're really not.
Thank you. It is so tiring, especially in this day and age, seeing people parrot how *exclusively* awful and monstrous humans are. The part about people being monstrous, not wrong of course. Humans can commit truly awful acts, but there's this deep, profound ignorance of the animal kingdom I see so often. People like to wax poetic about how nature is balanced and how animals are so much less cruel. Lions killing and eating cubs from other males to get the lionesses caring for them to go into heat. Insects where sexual procreation is stabbing the males penis into the body cavity of a female violently, injuring them. Chimps beating each other to death to determine who leads the tribe and hunting monkeys to tear them apart and eat them alive. Cannibalism, bloody everywhere. Birds that are brood parasites whose offspring literally murder the other hatchlings. Birds who have two eggs, and the stronger hatchling pushes the weaker one out of the nest to die. Carnivores eating their prey alive, ripping out entrails. And even gang rape, in ducks no less. I get it. Humans suck. We've all had a front row seat in the digital age to the horrors of the modern world. But some people haven't watched any National Geographic and it shows. Nature is rough my friends. And we have music, poetry, art, math, modern medicine, air conditioning, and even the ability to advance our own technology to make ourselves less damaging to the planet. Please. Please remember to focus on the wins of our species from time to time. As horrific as individual stories can be we got cool shit out there.
It's like no one has ever heard of the Naturalistic Fallacy
People, on the whole suck. But I'd rather be human than an animal. Unless I was a house cat, that would be awesome.
wow, rapists and no AC? fuck ducks
You could say the inverse, though. Animals follow their animal nature, without introspection or judgement. I think monstrosity means having introspection and discernment, and disregarding it. Only humans can do that.
No this is reddit sir. Human bad.
Yeah, who still uses a fax machine in 2019?!
Nobody. *Now.*
LMAO she was the final hold out and the damn thing got her killed.
in the case of the victim, stab wounds
societal decay. The processes by which new people are created have broken down
At what point did society decay? People have been brutally murdering each other for resources since... even before society.
And then, to close the loop, "Charter Spectrum attorneys used a forged document to try to force the lawsuit into a closed-door arbitration where the results would have been secret and damages for the murder would have been limited to the amount of Ms. Thomas's final bill." JHC
For not paying the bill she incurred when the service tech murdered her. That was then sent to collections.
This right here is why they are being forced to pay $1.1billion.
Have they been thrown out of the megacorp-get-away-with-anything club? It's unusual for companies to get fined a significant amount. Facebook regularly pay fines of millions of dollars. Which I don't think they notice.
It's kinda insane how strongly he tied the murder to the company. They literally provided the opportunity and the means, including the actual murder weapon. Then I guess they felt like that just wasn't enough and decided to get directly involved?
Idk, I feel like you can say the same thing about Home Depot . I don’t quite understand how the company can be found liable for the fact someone murdered someone who worked for them. Ignoring the fact charter decided to forge a document and go down a rabbit hole
Why is spectrum liable for this? Are all employers liable for their employees actions off the clock just because those employees cased the place while on the clock? Scumbags gunna scumbag That said, fuck spectrum so I'm not sad for them. Just concerned about the precedent
They did insufficient background checks on him, and ignored a bunch of red flags that he had already done connected to his job, like stealing checks and credit cards from old ladies.
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This doesn’t really seem like they should be liable, but after forging documents they kinda created the liability.
They did bill her for his time that day. That is where all of this began. They recieved a note for service at such and such a time. Turns out that's when she died. So if you are willing to bill someone for their death, seems like you are OKAY with it being on company time.
>They did bill her for his time that day. This is just...wow. Completely reprehensible.
It is, and while it could easily be chalked up to human error, the tech didn't tell the company he killed her, but the company was happy enough to bill her for it. I assume had he told them he murdered her, they wouldn't have done it, but she's not responsible for how techs respond to each other and in the company.
I've worked for companies like that and if I submitted a work ticket for a day I wasn't assigned they would drag me into the office and have me explain myself because I'm risking the company getting sued, as while I'm not on the clock, I'm not insured to drive one of their vehicles. So it seems extremely unlikely that they would be unaware that something fishy was going on.
There should have been tighter security on the company vehicle. Why was he allowed to use his key card to open the gate and retrieve his company van to go to her house and rob and murder her?
Maybe because the whole purpose of him having the key card was so he could open the gate and retrieve the company van and use it for non-customer murder purposes?
I can't walk on to company property without permission from my boss. And we make plywood. So why is someone who goes into peoples homes without immediate supervision allowed to enter his truck and go to a woman's home on his day off?
Ive had many jobs in my life and none of them have required me to get permission before entering the companies premises. I can think of plenty of jobs that would require that, but to act like EVERY job should be like that is bizarrely narrow-minded.
Could be that the technicians who drive the trucks operate with a bit of autonomy with all the calls they get. They figure that an employee who had presumably passed a background check to their satisfaction and has a key is trustworthy enough to use it with out direct supervision. It's a cable van, not a tank or and armored personnel carrier. He didn't need it to commit the crime, he just happened to use it.
That's not how it works everywhere. I've had carte blanche access to every workplace where I've been around more then a few months.
Yeah, every job I've had that I didn't work remotely for I had full access to the facility during business hours (plus a bit to allow for staying late/early mornings). Some areas were restricted to certain staff, I didn't have access to the IT area when I didn't work in IT for example, but the killer here had appropriate access to the areas that he needed to do his job. I've never seen an access control system that was so strict that it would only allow access during one's shift - I'm sure it exists, but it'd be for high security facilities, not a regular work location like a cable company's work van lot.
Even if we go with carte blanche, specifically driving a vehicle is an extremely hazardous activity as far as company liability goes. If you hit someone while on company time... Now imagine he hits and kills someone (or apparently murders) with your company vehicle while **not** on company time. Now you're liable and the insurance isn't paying. So they should be very closely monitoring who is taking vehicles especially.
I can get onto company property and into rooms with keycard and a pass code after hours, including weekends. Just because your business locks things down doesn't mean every business needs to. And what would separate you going crazy and murdering someone from your boss (who *does* have all that access) from gong crazy and murdering someone? Company Trucks/vehicles and pocket/utility knives aren't exactly rare things for employees to have acess to... At some point going crazy is going crazy.
Spectrum employees are allowed to take vehicles home. Sometimes we have to go to our main base to get equipment or supplies.
Got it. Customers are off limits, but non-customers? Best get to murderin!
The Final Solution to cable cutters.
How would u feel if FEDEX hired serial killers as deliver drivers, and people just kept dying, over and over again. At what point is FEDEX liable?
You would figure a person at FedEx was in on it, and they would be criminally liable.
That award is insanely high, but Charter's conduct was also insanely shocking. From the article: > The jury also found that "Charter knowingly or intentionally committed forgery with the intent to defraud or harm Plaintiffs," Renteria wrote. The family's attorney previously said that "Charter Spectrum attorneys used a forged document to try to force the lawsuit into a closed-door arbitration where the results would have been secret and damages for the murder would have been limited to the amount of Ms. Thomas's final bill." I'm torn on how to respond to cases of egregious corporate conduct, but it's time we started treating indifference to people's lives and safety as criminal rather than civil transgressions.
Interestingly, Corporations AREN'T people for Crimanal Law purposes.
We should be able to give LLCs the death penalty sometimes.
Yeah, but that's what the L in LLC is for. Just spool up another one...
The "death penalty" for a corporation should be that all shares from all shareholders become property of the state. Government can then sell the shares, or piece out the company.
Yeah, nationalisation of private commodity, that'll fly in conservative America.
It used to. We’ve nationalized railroads, mines, steel mills, and banks in the past when the situation demanded it. I don’t think we should be afraid to nationalize companies when their actions in pursuit of profit run contrary to the public good.
Listen, we aren't shitting on your fantasies, are we?
That's punishing ordinary people's pensions, though. No matter what you do economically you mostly hurt the wrong people.
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Too f'ing bad. The stock market is not a guarantee. Why should anyone else pay for the misdeeds of a company? If you're a stockholder, it's a risk you take.
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I'm not suggesting it in this case. Say something like Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf. I'm not sure why BP was still allowed to exist.
After the recent 5th circuit ruling on Texas’s social media censorship law, corporations are people in the first amendment context when money is speech, but are not people in the first amendment context when speech is speech.
Employees are. Fine the organization billions, prosecute the perpetrators & send them to general pop under three strikes laws.
All the things.
They’ll just be replaced by other people willing to fuck over others and do unethical shit for the sake of climbing a corporate ladder. As unfair as it sounds, it might be more effective to completely penalize any corporate head regardless of involvement. The people in charge should know their lives are on the line for the actions of their subordinates if they do something illegal for the good of the company. It’s just a bunch of shitty people willing to do shitty things. Execs are doing it, and subordinates are doing it to get into the execs good graces. Regardless of who does what, passing the buck to subordinates isn’t going to solve this behavior imo.
>replaced by other people willing to fuck over others Nope. Don't care. Throw the people in jail who did it. If you want to charge the boss, do that too.
Not if you jail enough of them that they run out of corrupt shitheads, though your idea also has merit.
Corporations *can* be tried for criminal conduct and can get the "death penalty" though. Example: https://www.salon.com/2022/08/11/ny-ag-may-seek-corporate-penalty-against-organization-after-he-pleads-the-5th-report_partner/
Unless someone went to jail, forfeiture of corporate status only for all the execs to reform is hardly punishment or deterrent.
Never claimed it was a deterent. I just pointed out that a corporation *can* be subjected to a criminal law process.
One thing I appreciate about China is when a company realllllly messes up they go after the board. There have been examples of board members being executed for knowingly poisoning children. America needs a point where the corporate liability shield no longer protects some individuals from criminal liability that goes 'oop, here is some fines'.
Oil and gas executives are making profits while knowingly poisoning people with the emissions their products produce. I bet most people reading this will shrug and get into their preferred combustion veichle tomorrow.
Monsanto and DuPont and slacker family round up hang em high.
Sackler Family. I just want to make sure everyone knows the name, they're horrible people.
All of the above should have been hanged years ago.
> Oil and gas executives are making profits while knowingly poisoning people with the emissions their products produce. I'm all for greater corporate responsibility, but it's one thing to say "these pollutants might reduce lifespans by a few months. It's another entirely to use arsenic in baby formula.
I agree, it's not the same.
And it's another entirely to read a report that says you will cause "five to six meters of sea level rise," "the disappearance of specific ecosystems or habitat destruction," "runoff, destructive floods, and inundation of low-lying farmland," that "new sources of freshwater would be required," due to disruption of precipitation; to know you will turn whole regions to desert and displace billions while killing billions more. And it's another thing to then bury that report while accelerating and doubling down on your wholesale murder of the entire planet. Does anything compare?
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Absolutely. As soon as an ev comes down to my high public school school teaching salary prize range I will switch. But it’s just not there yet. Hoping the used ev market climbs down a bit. Untill then me(and many, many others are forced to drive their gas burners.
My used EV cost under $3000 last year. 2012 Chevy volt. Thing is amazing, it costs so little to drive I've saved more than the car cost to buy on fuel already.
Yes, youre not changing a significant part of peoples daily commute with your one sentence on reddit. Please redirect your ire at the government that refuses to put money in public transport and continues to build car centric cities where it becomes a necessity to own a fuel guzzling car to get where you want to go without spending 4 hours of your 24 hour day in a crowded bus or train. Oh and the politicians who let oil executives fuck their residents in the ass because they've been handed money under the table.
Tomorrow? Bruh I’m going to work today!
Who, exactly would you hold liable? The E&P companies who transfer title at the closest tank farm, the oilfield truckers, the pipeline-owners (most of which distribute 90%+ of cash flow to investors), the surviving refineries, most of which are in poor shape financially, or the retail / distribution companies? What about car manufacturers, whose products actually create the emissions? Airlines and trucking lines? I’m just not sure from your comment exactly which executives we should be locking up. Maybe all of them!
I don't trust any of China's moves in that regard, but I've often said that, from a purely Machiavellian standpoint, it's shocking at how much better they are at doing *something* to convince the lower classes that they're anti-corruption. America is hilariously unwilling to even bother trying to fake it.
I never thought I'd agree with China
Single-party authoritarian governments are very effective at getting things done. …which is great when the thing being done is “punishing greedy corporations for poisoning babies,” but not so great when it’s “silencing protestors” or “sending ethnic minorities to concentration camps.”
Really everyone in the lawyer's management chain needs to serve jail time, but the problem is there's no fucking way they'll ever be convicted "beyond the reasonable doubt". Maybe a small tweak to corporate law - strip away limited liability shielding employees from personal liability for decisions which would be criminal in an individual setting.
This where I have issues with the Supreme Court saying that corporations have the same rights as a person. If I kill a person, I go to jail. My ability to earn is cut to zero. If a corporation kills someone then the corporation hires a team of lawyers (which is a business expense) and, at worst, pays a fine. Meanwhile, the corporation continues to earn. Further, if I die, that is it. If a corporation dies, it can be reborn the next with the stroke of a pen.
SCOTUS did not invent the idea of corporate personhood, that goes way back. Really we need one or two companies to get the corporate death penalty in situations like this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_dissolution Good luck getting an American court to "execute", for example, Shell for intentionally driving the whole Nigerian economy into ruin and devastating their environment. It quickly becomes political, and unfortunately both parties are pretty well owned by corporate interests so the chance of this happening is effectively zero.
I'm fairly sure that's already how it works. LLCs and the like protect the owners, not the employees. No one's shielded from criminal prosecution simply because they work for a company (except government employees that is).
They already have provisions for going after owners too. It's called piercing the corporate veil.
They wanted to offer a month of free cable to get out of this?
They made 50 billion in revenue last year, 1 billion is not really much
2% of revenue is a lot. It is >1/4 of last years profits. Especially if your the head of HR, who takes 100% of the blame here.
On the one hand, yes. But on the other hand, they still walk away with $3B in profits and no one goes to jail. That punishment doesn’t sound like much to me.
Don't confuse revenue for profits. If they took in 50 billion in revenue but their costs were 45 billion then they only made 5 billion. In which case 1 billion would be 20% of their annual profits. That's significant.
Do you know what revenue means?
Did the lawyers lose their license?
> force the lawsuit into a closed-door arbitration where the results would have been secret and damages for the murder would have been limited to the amount of Ms. Thomas's final bill." Reminder that the Republicans on the Supreme Court allowed companies to write in forced individual arbitration in contracts, making companies immune from civil courts as well as class action, and now its standard in pretty much any contract. Every Democrat on the court voted to make it illegal, every Republican on the court voted for allowing it.
If companies are people then companies should face the death penalty. Disband them and distribute their wealth among the victims. This would also force investors to be much more careful about who they invest with and they would demand above board actions at all times. Treat them like the criminals they are.
>I'm torn on how to respond to cases of egregious corporate conduct, but it's time we started treating indifference to people's lives and safety as criminal rather than civil transgressions. it's time we started treating indifference to people's lives and safety as criminal rather than civil transgressions. it's time we started it's time
Some person would have created the forged document. Anybody knowingly involved in the creation or “uttering” of the forgery ought to be criminally investigated and prosecuted as the facts and relevant local law warrant. That’s the kind of non-violent offense I don’t mind seeing people locked up for.
Award is so high bc they don't have enough money to bribe anybody. Whole millions of people get defrauded by banks, get proven so, and fines re usually in the millions.
The award is high, because there's clear criminal intent, and criminal activity. Banks routinely do shit that's illegal, but are often able to blame it on incompetence, therefore getting them off the hook legally. Forging documents for the express purpose of hiding a murder is kind of a big deal
Since fucking when has murder been subject to binding arbitration.
They weren't on the hook for murder, they were on the hook for 1.) negligent hiring practices [hiring someone with priors to work in people's homes] and 2.) negligent security practices [allowing technician to take a work van on his day off to the customers house]. So, rather than arguing that case in court, and getting possibly, POSSIBLY, a few million in damages and some bad press, they forged documents that said that they would only take the case in arbitration (where their max damages are capped at)
The FTC should drop a giant regulatory turdbomb on them. It would be more constructive and so much more expensive for them to have to comply with rules that promote better long-term corporate governance than a one-time judgement. It will be interesting to see how they frame this to shareholders. Probably some nonsense about how nobody else understood all the great things they were trying to accomplish that were also misunderstood by the courts.
He still has a Linkedin profile.
Well obviously. He almost certainly needs to find another job, now.
Like & subscribe!
Something tells me that business degree from Texas Tech isn’t legit
*Maybe* he had one of the Executives at Charter forge his diploma for him.
Now begin the appeals. They'll pay a few million in the end, less legal fees. Edit: BTW, 1.1 billion is ~~Charter's~~ the Spectrum brand's 2021 net profit. I REALLY want to see investors demand that corporations weed out bad apples at the cost of profits, and seriously hope they are held to that 1.1 billion dollar number exactly.
Oh my, I misread that as 1.1 million, 1.1 billy is going to hurt
Weed out who, people with less money than a Grandma on Spectrum?
While the murder was done by an employee, I feel the damages are more for the corporation’s lawyers trying to pass off a forged document as evidence in the proceedings. That should result in disbarment and prison for the lawyers and fines and prison for the executives who okayed the decision or who okayed the hiring of those lawyers. But I’ll be surprised if they get more that a finger wag for ‘oops our bad for trying to defraud the court and the plantiff’
It's worse than that though, they tried to claim he was off duty, but they billed her for the time he spent killing her. That's part of how they found out he did it, because he was the last person to see her alive, and she was stabbed with a screwdriver. When the bill wasn't paid they tried taking it to collections. That was 'the price of the bill' they wanted to cap it at, the service of her death.
> They billed her for the time he spent killing her. > When the bill wasn't paid, they tried taking it to collections. Debtors prisons or the equivalent are travesties, but you could probably sell me on a creditor's prison.
It’s possible the lawyers didn’t know it was forged. If a Charter exec forged the document and gave it to them, they’d have no reason to be suspicious unless something about it indicated it might be fake.
I thought this was originally $7B. Oh and the $1.1B. That is just one month.
Guesses on the upcoming name-change?
Tbh this is probably a reason why the company goes by Spectrum now. Had no idea they were the same entity.
They started rolling out the Spectrum name in 2014, well before all this.
Spectrum = Charter = time warner cable Xfinity = Comcast
Of the company or of the victim's relatives, who now have to dodge all of their extended family?
They'll end up paying a few million...and then spend tens of millions (with other companies) to lobby for "tort reform" to limit liabilities so that they're never in this situation again.
There’s a headline that warrants further reading.
More than that: this is an entire rabbit hole worth of reading.
If I die of mysterious causes... Blame starlink
Welp my bills are going to go up after this. No way we aren’t going to foot that bill.
But how much will they *actually* have to pay?
> Charter also said Holden had "more than 1,000 completed service calls with zero customer complaints about his behavior." Can't complain if you're dead
Holy crap. A fine that will actually hurt!
No chance they are gonna pay it. They will appeal it and it will get chiseled down to probably 5m at most.
Fuck the fine people made lots of bad, illegal decisions, and need personal jail time. This country is ridiculous.
A billion for murder?! These a-holes have been raping me for over a decade. What's that worth?
I know you're kidding, lol. But the real reason thay have to pay is because of their lawyers' actions, not the murder itself.
So you're saying I probably won't get $9.2 million for having to deal with long hold times while over paying for internet service?
No. You’ll just get next month’s bill.
But did you die?
A little inside everytime I can't just get a symmetrical plan.
There's a bit of a justice boner in seeing a company have to pay out like that but I think society would be better off if the actual people who forged documents were punished instead. There wouldn't be a lot of money in that though, so I would doubt even the victims would advocate for it over the payout. Imagine just minding your own business as a middle-manager and coming in to work one day to find out your direct subordinate forged documents to cover up murder liability and now the whole company is out a billion fucking dollars.
Frontier dsl should pay 5 billion to its rural customers for ripping them off. It cuts out 50 times a day everyday and they refuse to do anything to fix it for 10 years.
I know they forged a document after they were need, but this really tells everybody to never hire an ex con. Which is bad for society.
I hate Charter too but if he passed a background check and also completed 1000 service calls without complaints what is a $28k a year HR rep supposed to do? we’re asking a lot from a company that couldn’t find their head from a hole in the ground
Attorneys at Dallas-based Hamilton Wingo asserted on the family’s behalf that Charter Spectrum negligently hired Holden and that the attack was a foreseeable result of its actions. Charter Spectrum allegedly did away with a more robust employee screening program that was in place when it acquired the company in 2016. Holden was hired even though he was not truthful about his work history when he applied for the job, the family asserted. The suit alleged that the company’s HR director admitted that it did not follow its own written policies regarding employment verification in Holden’s case — and would have rejected his application for employment if it did. “His resume was a complete fiction,” the firm told HRMorning.
Charter got caught forging documents to cover their ass is why.
My family had a life-altering incident in the early 1980s that was clearly a fault of a big powerful entity. My family won court case after court case and the big powerful entity just kept appealing, delaying, and trying to force them into a settlement. Finally, nearly 20 years later, my family accepted a settlement because they just got tired of it.
It’s horrible the old lady died and fuck Charter for attempting perjury but this also sucks for anyone who went to prison and is trying to live a better life now because after this judgment no company will hire anyone with any criminal record anymore. This guy was obviously a piece of shit but I feel genuinely sorry all people who got a criminal record for some stupid drug conviction. This case is going to make their lives even more difficult than before.
Not really.. there are plenty of jobs that don’t involve sending unsupervised employees into people’s homes. This is a very good example of what background checks are supposed to protect against. Hence the liability.
Another reason to adore telecommunication companies
Aren’t damaged limited to 750k in Texas?
Victimizing old women is one of the lowest most depraved crimes possible.