PacBell To Be Hit With $27M Fine

MImeKillEr writes: "The San Francisco Chronicle has an article that states PacBell is going to be hit with a $27 million fine for "incorrectly billing" between 30,000 and 70,000 users for DSL access they didn't request or recieve, or received but didn't work, or cancelled, tacking late fees onto disputed charges, etc."

Comments

Re:Why punitive damages make sense

[sam_handelman]

Maybe you really were negligent, maybe you didn't fix the steps even though you knew they were cracked, does that justify an unreasonable award?

That depends. If a reasonable award will motivate other shopkeepers to keep their steps repaired, then no, an unreasonable reward is not required. It depends a lot on how often these companies get caught. If a company only has a 1% chance of being caught doing X, then when they are caught the punitive cost must be hundreds of times the marginal benefit of doing X, or it isn't enough of a deterrent. Billing irregularities in the telecom industry happen all the time, and only a fraction are ever prosecuted. Therefore, when they are, the punitive damages need to be huge.

If you have to drive one company out of business to keep an entire industry in line, you should do it. If you have some other means of reigning in the rampant corporate lawlessness in this country, I'd like to hear it.

Companies can go under, and people can lose their jobs. Them's the breaks. I'll stand by the argument that more people will have better jobs if corporations obey the law; if some companies have to be punitively destroyed, so be it.