Why are corporate fines for shady or illegal business practices so often less than the amount they made by doing those illegal practices? At that point, don’t the fines just become a cost of doing business?
Specifically thinking about Perdue Pharma. PBS article says they made $35billion pushing opioids, but the current court case is only seeking $6billion on fines. Ignoring the Sackler’s immunity request, this is still a net win.
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This all or nothing mentality is exactly the reason why there won’t be any new opioid-based pain killer on the market soon. Why companies bother dealing with the potential political fallout? They should just reuse the old and highly addictive generic pain killer to avoid those kind of consequences, meanwhile consumers are stuck with the out-dated products with no improvement. Most of Perdue’s business is legit and legal, they are only paying punitive fines for false advertising for smaller part of their business. Striping all their revenues does not seem fair at all.
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