Wal-Mart high crime rate continues uninvestigaterd

Wal-Mart Shootings

Previously I did a blog about Wal-Mart shoplifting vigilantism gone wild? where I focused primarily on the unusually large problems they have with shoplifting and how they often overreact and that a lot of this was almost certainly partially a result of policies made at the corporate office. This conclusion was partially backed up by a statistical study, "Is Wal-Mart Safe?" based on incidents in 2004, (PDF) which showed that they had four times as many incidents at Wal-Mart than their closest competitor, Target, among other problems. As far as I know there haven't been any other high profile studies that have been done since then but Wal-Mart Shootings have been compiling a list of many of the highest profile incidents that were gun related. These aren't statistically adequate for comparisons with other stores or enough to determine if they're caused by Wal-Mart policies; but a close look at some of these incidents combined with a look at some of Wal-Marts policies indicates that this is a major possibility worth considering especially when considering the statistical back up from the 2006 study. As reported in “Walmart: The High Cost of Low Prices.” a study done by Wal-Mart (available at Walmart Shootings) indicates they could reduce assaults in their parking lots almost to zero by posting a roving guard; but instead of doing so they squashed the study, presumably so they could save money on security. This doesn't seem to be a problem when it comes to security for stolen goods.

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Research that supports the best interest of the majority of the public and raises doubts about the methods used to maximize profits routinely has a hard time getting funding.

Propaganda that supports corporate interests and biased research has much more funding and when it is done it routinely gets much better treatment from the press and the political establishment even when it is seriously flawed. 
 

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Their problems might go beyond shoplifting and assaults as well as other crimes that were addressed in the study. They may also have a major problem with employees that strike out against oppressive policies by Wal-Mart. The vast majority of employees are almost certainly not involved in this, as may be indicated by the large number of protests that have been escalating over the last couple of years. However these protests and legitimate grievances aren't new and they haven't been overly successful, so far in bringing about changes that protect workers right. It is inevitable that a relatively small percentage of people might strike out as a result of this and in some cases they might do it with extreme measures.

There have been at least four high profile cases where employees planned assaults, killings or hostages of their co-workers or managers. In at least one case the perpetrator who shot three managers told a police officer he wanted to “get even and embarrass Wal-Mart.” A typical response to these incidents might be "that's no excuse," which would be true if you consider the definition of "excuse" a justifiable reason for committing a crime; however it may still be the reason for it even if it isn't justifiable. Furthermore there are many more people that don't go to extremes to express their grievances and they aren't addressed. If the government or the companies don't fix the lack of fairness because of the people that go to extremes then they should do it for those that don't go to extremes and attempt to address their problems through reasonable means.

Unfortunately this doesn't happen; and this is almost certainly a major contributing factor to their high rate of incidents.

Another major problem that they've been having for years appears to be an enormous number of bomb threats; however there doesn't seem to be much media coverage of this except at the local level and they treat the vast majority of them as isolated incidents. On the rare occasions where the news stories about these do acknowledge the fact that they are quite common they still don't seem to report on how many bomb threats there are. Few if any of them are in my area and while preparing this blog I was unaware that they were going on at all until I was almost done compiling links about other types of crimes when I found two stories about bomb threats in different states and they were both treated as isolated incidents without acknowledging the other. It didn't take long after that to find out that there have been dozens of them going on over the past few months and when I looked for more it is clear that there have been many more over the years. Without further investigation it is hard to tell how many there are but there almost certainly have hundreds if not thousands of bomb threats over the years.

Most if not all of these bomb threats seem to have been false alarms; however they continue to treat most of them as real threats often closing the stores and evacuating the stores at an enormous expense to the store and the taxpayers. One reason why they may feel they have to do this is that although most of the threats have been false there have also been at least nine incidents where bombs have exploded, presumably without bomb threats in most cases, at Wal-Mart including one incident where there was over $12,000 worth of damage and another where five people were injured. The few examples where they caught people that were suspected of calling in these threats didn't mention their motives. I don't know for certain but I wouldn't rule out the possibility that at least some of these people were angry at Wal-Mart and like the employees who carried out shootings in response to their grievances I wouldn't consider these hypothetical grievances excuses or justifiable reasons for calling these bomb threats but it might be considered all the more reason why they should do more to address the grievances of those who use legitimate means to raise their complaints. There are plenty of other sources to indicate that there have been an enormous amount of problems with Wal-Mart and most people can't get any help from either the corporate office, the government or the media. The corporate office is run by people that only seem to be interested in profit; the media is collecting an enormous amount of advertising dollars from Wal-Mart, not to mention the possibility that they may have interlocking board members; and the government is run by politicians that are more concerned about serving the interests of their campaign contributors including Wal-Mart than the public.

My point isn't that all my conclusions are conclusive; with the information available I wouldn't come to that conclusion. My point is that there is an enormous amount of information to indicate that there are major problems and that the research on it isn't adequate; however there is enough research, including more studies listed below, to indicate that there are major problems and even though all the details aren't conclusive it is clear that Wal-Mart policies are a major contributing factor to them. Wal-Mart responded to the crime study in, Response to Wake Up Wal-Mart’s Crime Study Release; this relatively brief response fails to address the vast majority of the problems raised by the original study and focuses on a few minor issues which it raises about the sampling used for the study. It includes a link to what they refer to as an "independent analysis discussing the defects in the UFCW study;" however the link they provide is no longer active; and many corporations, including Wal-Mart, have a history of either financing their own studies which tend to be biased or misrepresenting other studies. they decline to provide any link to the study they are refuting so unless someone knows where to look they might not realize how many problems there are with their rebuttal. Unlike many other researchers they decline to call for more research which is almost always helpful. They seem to expect people to accept their word for it and pretend their isn't a problem. Their inadequate response to this problem is typical, as indicated in one of the earliest crimes listed below where one of their employees stole a truck while it was being repaired at Sam's Club and Wal-Mart initially refused to accept any responsibility and told the owner of the truck that he should raise his complaint with the former employee who was in jail, had no money and the truck was already stripped for parts. It wasn't until after it became a national story where Wal-Mart agreed to compensate him. this reluctance to address problems unless they absolutely have to has been going on since. Instead of competing for business and maintaining a good reputation they rely on political connections to enable their growth; but that is almost certainly coming to an end.

They have even more problems during the Christmas season and as I explained in, Why no discussion on preventing Black Friday Riots in the media? I have no doubt that if they did more research into that as well they would almost certainly find that Wal-Mart policies are a major contributing factor that cases the annual Black Friday Riots. Many of these crimes involve low income people that have much fewer educational and economic opportunities especially with the outsourcing and wage suppression that is being led by Wal-Mart among other corporations. The usual claim would of course be that this is no excuse and that we shouldn't blame society. this is a very simple and easy answer that many people might be willing to accept; however there is enough research available, if people are willing to look at it, to indicate that if we did more to address social problems that these incidents could be dramatically reduced. this doesn't mean that Wal-Mart is the sole contributing cause of crime or even the leading one; as indicated in other posts I have no doubt that the biggest contributing cause to violence and other crimes is almost certainly early child abuse that leads to more violence later in life. However it is almost certainly a contributing cause; and as long as corporations have excessive control over the political establishment we can't even address other problems properly. Wal-Mart executives also support ALEC which is promoting many other conservative causes that are detrimental to society in other ways as well.

There problems have become so extreme that even if they can convince the media and the political establishment to continue to look the other way they can't hide it.

The following are some additional studies that have been done about Wal-Mart:

Do Big-Box Stores Help Create Hate Groups? Study Says Yes

Study Says The More Walmarts In The Area, The More Hate Groups There Are

Study Exposes Wal-Mart Crime and Safety Issues

Key Studies on Big-Box Retail & Independent Business

Reports and Economic Impact Studies on Wal-Mart and Big Box Development

Recent headlines about Wal-Mart which at any given time will involve additional problems with crime. For comparisons sake this headline search can be done for their competitors if your inclined to do so. When I did so I didn't find nearly as many stories about other stores; but their competitors don't have nearly as many stores. For statistical purposes the 2006 study is almost certainly more reliable pending further research.

The following are some of the crime stories that I found dating back at least to 2000 and a few incidents from the nineties. To minimize redundancy I didn't include many of the stories covered in either Wal-Mart shoplifting vigilantism gone wild? or Wal-Mart Shootings. When it comes to gun related crimes since January of 2012 Walmart Shootings provides a much more comprehensive list of incidents; however there are still a few they missed and this list also includes many incidents beyond their gun related criteria. They're listed in approximate chronological order; however some of them might be dated according to the time the articles were posted, especially when they refer to court proceedings months after the incident.

Truck Stolen, Stripped, But Still Gets Owner Runaround December 13, 1995|Mike Royko

One of the great success stories of our time is Wal-Mart. That homespun company really knows how to make money.

And Eric Matthys, a customer, says he recently got an idea of why they have done so well.

Matthys, 28, of St. Charles, Ill., needed some new tires for his pickup truck, so he went to Sam's Club, a Wal-Mart warehouse outlet that sells all sorts of basic stuff.

"I bought the tires, then drove around to the service area where they put the tires on. They said it would be done in 45 minutes to an hour, so I went and did shopping.

"When I came back, the employee I had dealt with asked me if I got my truck. I said, no, I was just coming for it. We looked around and the truck wasn't to be seen. Then he said that an employee had been finishing his shift just about the time I brought the truck in. The employee was gone and so was my truck." .....

"I told him that this was something other people might like to hear about, and that really got him mad. He warned me that I could be held liable for anything bad I said against Wal-Mart. I told him that I didn't see how I could be held liable for the truth.

"Then later I got a call from someone named Becky at that office who told me that Wal-Mart isn't responsible for the actions of its employees. That's something. One of their employees is in jail for stealing my truck while it was in the care of Sam's Club, but they say they aren't responsible. I don't have the financial resources to take on Wal-Mart. But they don't give me any choice. Complete article

99 Verdicts Against Wal-Mart (As of September 1999)

This compilation, 99 Verdicts Against Wal-Mart, is the first effort of the Wal-Mart Litigation Project. This collection of cases is the first of its kind - an attempt to publish a cross-section of plaintiff-favorable results against the nation's largest retailer.

The purpose of 99 Verdicts Against Wal-Mart is to educate plaintiffs' lawyers about cases similar to their own against Wal-Mart and facilitate communication between plaintiffs' lawyers on issues of discovery, law and litigation tactics.

Wal-Mart is sued two to five times each day somewhere in the United States. These cases involve slip-and-falls, falling merchandise, and false imprisonment/malicious prosecution. They also involve suits brought by employees alleging various kinds of discrimination. Also, the company is sued on a wide range of matters such as pharmacy malpractice, defective products, broken contracts with vendors, and copyright violations.

The following is a representative sample of lawsuits involving Wal-Mart. Complete article

Shooting Outside Wal-Mart Kills Two 06/12/1999

Man Shoots Wife, Kills Self In Pottstown Store Brian Midgette, 47, Chased Marsha Midgette, 45, In Wal-mart, Where She Worked. She Was Hospitalized. 08/31/2000

Howard Wal-Mart employee charged with assault 01/26/2001

Teens Charged With Setting Off Bombs in Maine Wal-Mart 11/26/2006

Five people were injured in an explosion at a Wal-Mart in Sylva, which is west of Asheville. 09/26/2007

Press Release Assault at Walmart Blvd - Hudson NH Police Department 10/09/2007

Updated: Jacksonville Wal-Mart Employee Opens Fire Inside Store, Creating Chaos 03/24/2008 A man accused of shooting up the new Jacksonville Walmart made his first court appearance Monday.

Police say 18 year old Elijah Payne was working there at the time. They say he went on an employee break from his shift around 2:30 A.M. That's when he reportedly went to his car, grabbed a sawed off shotgun and covered his face in cami paint. Police say Payne held about 15 people hostage in an employee breakroom no one was injured in the attack.

Payne's charged with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill and manufacturing a weapon of mass destruction. He's due in court again on April 14th. Complete article

Is Wal-Mart’s Lack Of Security To Blame For What Could Have Ended Up A Mass-Killing? 03/24/2008

Explosive Device Discovered at a Boone Wal-Mart 07/20/2008

Walmart, Landover Hills Complaints & Reviews - ETHICS POLICY VIOLATION. EMPLOYEE ASSAULT, HARASSMENT, PERSONAL INJURY DURING THE ASSAULT, WRONGFUL TERMINATION AND CIVIL RIGHTS VIOLATIONS 09/20/2008

Assaulted Walmart Greeter Sues Police Officer and Chattanooga Police Department 02/05/2009

Wal-Mart Bomb Threats Part of National Movement 02/20/2009

1 teen wounded; 1 arrested in NH Wal-Mart shooting 03/04/2009

Homemade bomb explodes at Maryland Wal-Mart 03/16/2009

Wal-Mart employee injured in shooting with co-worker 07/09/2009

Walmart Back Open After Bomb Threat 08/09/2013

Montana Police Release Man Who Shot Co-Worker at Wal-Mart Due to State’s Sweeping “Castle Doctrine” Law 08/14/2009

For most prosecutors, it would seem an easy criminal case. Daniel Lira, 32, was working inside Wal-Mart’s loading dock area when he got into an argument with co-worker Craig Schmidt, 49. He ended up hitting Schmidt in the face. Schmidt responded by pulling out a .25-caliber semiautomatic Beretta handgun and shooting Lira in the head from as little as 10 feet away. Yellowstone County Attorney Dennis Paxinos, however, released Schmidt in light of Montana’s “castle doctrine law” which allows citizens to use potentially lethal force in self-defense — despite the escalation in the level of force by Schmidt from a fist fight to a shooting. Complete article

Remembering the Walmart bomb threat/CorTrust robbery, one year ago today 09/16/2009

UPDATE: Police arrest Racine man for Mount Pleasant Walmart Shooting 10/18/2009

Walmart Greeter Ed Bauman Fired for Defending Himself After Getting Punched by Customer 01/12/2010

2 Arrested in Aggravated Assault at Walmart 05/30/2010

Attempted Robbery At Wal-Mart In Fayetteville Where Shots Were Fired 09/17/2010

SUTHERLAND v. WAL MART STORES INC: 10/02/2010 Her allegations included maintenance of a hostile work environment based on sex discrimination and retaliation for reporting sex discrimination,

Worker shot 3 managers to 'get even and embarrass Wal-Mart,' jurors told 10/28/2010

Last year, a disgruntled Wal-Mart employee allegedly crept into the Reno store where he worked carrying two guns and a thirst for revenge.

John Gillane bought a box of .44-caliber bullets. Then, police say, he shot and wounded three managers, one of whom had given him a bad work evaluation.

The threat subsided only after Gillane, now 46, spoke for hours with Reno Police Officer Patrick O’Bryan, according to testimony in Gillane's trial, which is expected to last another week. .....

Gillane, a nine-year Wal-Mart employee, was broke, anxious and depressed. Over two hours, he told O’Bryan that he wanted to “get even and embarrass Wal-Mart,” O’Bryan testified, according to the Reno paper. “I told him he got his wish.” Complete article

John Gillane found guilty but What about Wal-Mart? 12/14/2011

HPD: Homemade bomb explodes at southwest Houston Walmart 11/04/2010

One dead, one injured in shooting at west Huntsville Walmart 12/06/2010

Two killed, two deputies injured in shooting at Port Orchard Walmart 01/23/2011

Fayetteville police arrest 2 in Walmart armed robbery 02/04/2011

Two arrested in attack of elderly Walmart greeter 03/27/2011

Sexual Predators and Serial Rapists Run Wild at Wal-Mart Supplier in Jordan 06/07/2011

Young women workers raped, tortured and beaten at the Classic Factory

According to witnesses who work at Classic Fashion, scores of young Sri Lankan women sewing clothing for Wal-Mart and Hanes have suffered routine sexual abuse and repeated rapes, and in some cases even torture. One young rape victim at the Classic factory in Jordan told us her assailant, a manager, bit her, leaving scars all over her body. Women who become pregnant are forcibly deported and returned to Sri Lanka. Women who refuse the sexual advances of Classic's managers are also beaten and deported. Complete article

Four arrested in Walmart robbery 06/10/2011

One Dead, One in Custody Following Mount Pleasant Walmart Stabbing 10/04/2011

MCSO: Explosive device found at Valley Walmart 11/24/2011

Chardon: Bomb threat forces Walmart evacuation 11/26/2011

Walmart bomb scare leads to arrest 12/03/2011

Danbury police charge 2 in Walmart parking lot shooting 12/23/2011

Sisters stabbed at Providence Walmart 11/25/2011

2 charged in Jacksonville Walmart parking lot shooting 12/27/2011

Man at Virginia Walmart distribution center opens fire, injuring manager and then killing himself 02/22/2012

33-year-old Melvin D. Taylor, Jr. "just didn't seem together" the day he showed up for his job at a Dinwiddie, Virginia Walmart distribution center. After his lunch break, he walked to the back of the building and opened fire, injuring 40-year-old Wynette Starks, a manager at the facility, in the leg. He then exited the building, where police were arriving, and had a shoot-out with them. Taylor then committed suicide. Complete article

Mr. Melvin D. Taylor, Jr. obituary

UPDATE: Gunshots Came After Walmart Shoplifting 04/16/2012

Walmart Bomb Threats Spread Across The Midwest Over The Weekend 07/30/2012

Wal-Mart assault trial set to begin Monday 08/17/2012

Walmart employee arrested for alleged police assault 08/28/2012

Man Arrested for Allegedly Kissing Random Women at Wal-Mart 09/13/2012

The Eunice Police Department responded to Wal-Mart in reference to an alleged battery complaint. A female Wal-Mart employee stated that an unknown man, later identified as Randy Butcher, tried to talking to her and when she tried to walk away he grabbed her and started kissing her. The employee managed to finally get away and notified her supervisor who called police while Butcher was still inside the store.

A second female victim was a customer shopping in the store. She said she was also approached by Randy Butcher who asked for her phone number while complementing her. At that moment the female victims said her boyfriend walked into the aisle and confronted Butcher when he observed his behavior. This victim also reported him to a Wal-Mart supervisor. Complete article

Walmart Evacuated Due To Bomb Threat 09/22/2012

Assaulted & Fired at Wal-Mart, Mom Says 10/03/2012

"Buck Bomb" at Chambersburg Wal-Mart causes $12,840 in damage 10/10/2012

Shopper Assaulted Over Wal-Mart Pumpkin by Al Norman 10/16/2012

Rockey Carter is asking Wal-Mart for an apology. But he is unlikely to get one.

On October 16th, Carter was shopping at a Wal-Mart in McKinney, Texas. "I walked through the store selecting the items on my list, and sorted them in my basket according to food type as I normally do," Carter told me. "At the last minute I decided it would be fun to pick up one or two pumpkins for my wife's party. I went to the lawn and garden center because the pumpkins are located outside the store." Complete article

Ontario jury awards former Walmart employee $1.46 million for constructive dismissal 10/19/2012

Juvenile charged with second-degree assault after incident at Walmart 11/13/2012

Walmart evacuated 'Perceived threat' brings a chaotic start to Black Friday shoppers 11/22/2012

Fayetteville Walmart hit by armed robbers Thursday night 12/14/2012

Customers frightened as man brings assault rifle into Walmart 12/18/2012

Walmart Employee Pinned to Ground by Coworkers After Coming to Work Drunk 12/28/2012

A Redding Walmart employee is facing criminal charges after officers said he came to work drunk and then threatened his co-workers while they pinned him down.

The incident was all caught on camera by Bryant Krause. He said he filmed it because he doesn't think it was fair for the supervisors to keep him on the ground.

Officers said 21 year old Kevin Pokorney was threatening those co-workers and that they were worried about their safety. Complete article

Middle Eastern Man Shot In Face For Dating A White Woman (VIDEO) 01/03/2013

Police: Exploding chemical bomb at Wichita Wal-Mart may have been a diversion tactic for theft 01/17/2013

Deputy injured at Boiling Springs Walmart; suspect arrested after brief chase 02/08/2013

Shoplifter who bit Yakima Wal-Mart officer gets 3 years in prison 03/05/2013

Workers win! Wal-mart warehouse workers fired and charged with theft after pursuing sexual assault charges against management, found innocent. 03/07/2013

Manhattan resident Priscilla Marshall was an 18-year-old warehouse worker when she reported that she was sexually harassed and abused by a boss to the Elwood Police Department in August 2010. Warehouse supervisors claimed Marshall and three family members were running a theft ring and all were fired.

Four Elwood warehouse workers who were fired and charged with theft after one of them reported being sexually harassed at work have had the criminal charges against them dropped. Complete article

Walmart Employee Assaulted 03/17/2013

San Jose police: Seaside man drove into Walmart, assaulted staff and customers 04/01/2013

SAN JOSE -- In a story that is racking up national headlines, police say a drug-addled Seaside native crashed his car into an East San Jose Walmart and bludgeoned customers and an employee with a blunt object before he was tackled by onlookers Sunday morning.

Haamid Ade Zaid, 33, was booked into Santa Clara County jail on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, hit and run, being under the influence of drugs and resisting arrest, according to the San Jose Police Department. He was identified as a Seaside resident by police, but a relative said he now lives in San Jose. Complete article

Army officer attacked at Walmart in Albany 04/13/2013

Police: Area woman threatened to shoot Amsterdam co-workers 05/06/2013

AMSTERDAM - A "disgruntled employee" of Walmart allegedly threatened to shoot two fellow employees Sunday, according to the Montgomery County Sheriff's Department.

Cassandra A. Downs, 32, of 1040 University Place, Schenectady, was charged with second-degree harassment, a violation, and menacing, a misdemeanor, according to a report from the Sheriff's Department. ....

Reports were received that Downs had made a "hit list" of other employees. Smith could not confirm how many or who was on the list. Complete article

Woman threatens to shoot Wal-Mart coworkers 05/05/2013

Bomb squad called to Beaufort Walmart after suspicious objects found in vehicles 05/09/2013

Police Respond to Bomb Threat at Walmart 06/18/2013

Bomb Threat Closes Bedford Walmart 06/20/2013

Vacaville, California police shoot, kill man, 21, in car 06/29/2013

Russellville police seek 2 for Wal-Mart bomb threat 07/04/2013

Police Arrest Walmart Bomb Threat Caller 07/10/2013

Cops: Man, 22, Threw Semen On Walmart Shopper 07/11/2013

JULY 11--A Delaware man threw semen on a female customer shopping at Walmart Tuesday afternoon, police allege.

Cops arrested Frank J. Short Jr., 22, on an assortment of charges in connection with the repulsive incident at the store in New Castle. Short, seen in the below mug shot, was booked into a Wilmington jail, from which he was later released on bail. Complete article

Zimmerman verdict protesters attack TV reporter, storm Wal-Mart 07/16/2013

Walmart Employee Knocks Out Store Manager in Break Room Fistfight (Video)

A Walmart employee was caught on cell phone video punching out his manager after a heated argument in the employee break room.

The employee appears to be arguing with the manager about something that happened with a shopping cart the night before.

“Ma'am, don’t take up for him because this man is a racist,” the employee tells a coworker who is trying to diffuse the situation.

“He is a racist, and I am a freaking veteran," he continues. "Nobody is going to stand there and disrespect me for doing what I’m supposed to do!" Complete article

Walmart Reopens After Bomb Threat 07/22/2013

Powell: Store worker claims gang membership 07/23/2013

False Bomb Threat Gets Pedro Man in Jail 07/25/2013

Police Believe Walmart Bomb Threats are Connected 07/30/2013

Bomb threat at Walmart 07/31/3013

Local Walmart receives bomb threat 08/07/2013

Gastonia man arrested for showing privates at area Walmart, police say 08/08/2013

Walmart worker pepper sprayed after asking to check receipt 08/08/2013

Walmart Back Open After Bomb Threat 08/09/2013

Goose Creek Walmart evacuated for suspicious package 08/09/2013

Walmart in Avon Evacuated 08/11/2013

Homeless mom, daughter accused of stealing from Pasco Walmart 08/12/2013

Robber boldly hits bank in Fayetteville Walmart 08/12/2013

Machete-wielding man robs Mesa Walmart 08/13/2013

Man arrested in Walmart parking lot after robbery08/14/2013

Man wanted for attempted strong arm robbery outside Royal Palm Beach Walmart 08/14/2013

Man stabbed to death in Walmart parking lot 08/14/2013

Man takes a cab to rob Walmart store 08/14/2013

Dickinson police investigate possible suicide in Walmart parking lot 08/14/2013

Suspect in Neenah Walmart shooting held on attempted homicide charge 08/15/2013

NEENAH — Police have identified the suspect in the Walmart shooting Wednesday as Justine Boyd, 46, of Greenville.

Police Chief Kevin Wilkinson said Boyd was booked into the Winnebago County Jail on a charge of attempted first-degree intentional homicide. He said both Boyd and the 56-year-old Neenah woman she shot are Walmart employees, and the two were working when the shooting occurred in the liquor section of the store at 1155 W. Winneconne Ave.

The victim, a clerk in the liquor section, was taken by ambulance to Theda Clark Medical Center. Lt. John Karner said she was shot once in the torso. Complete article

Strange things happen at Wal-Mart!!

Trade Secrecy laws provide license to commit negligent mass murder

Thanks, in part, to trade secrecy laws and the absence of disclosure laws many energy and chemical companies have been dumping toxic waste, mainly in areas where people without much if any political power, for decades. There have been dozens if not hundreds or even thousands of cases where this has been exposed and they have been reluctantly and partially addressed. These include a handful of cases that have received an enormous amount of attention, for a little while anyway, as well as many more that haven't received much attention at all. The most widely known examples include the Love Canal in New York pollution by PG&E made famous by Erin Brockovich, and a site in Massachusetts exposed in the film A Civil Action staring John Travolta.There are few if any attempts to inform the vast majority of the public just how common these incidents are.

(This is a follow up to my previous post about Why Do We Have Trade Secrets? Professor Michael Risch's defense of fraud?; after I posted about his study, Michael Risch responded to my views; both his comments and my own additional ones are on the blog.)

In most if not all of these cases hiding the pollution may have been made easier as a result of trade secrecy laws that make few if any exceptions for activities that might endanger lives, especially for those with little or no political power. These trade secrecy laws enable them to require and enforce non-disclosure agreements from employees that make it illegal to inform the public when they're dumping toxic chemicals in areas where it might endanger the public. Even if these laws can't be enforced in many cases the employees may be led to believe that they can and they often face retaliation when they disclose information even if it isn't legal.

The use of trade secrecy laws haven't been the only contributing factor when it comes to allowing the enormous amount of environmental destruction going on around the world but they have made it much easier for energy companies to keep a low profile and with the help of the commercial media that reports one incident at a time as an isolated occasion without reporting on the vast majority of them or taking a comprehensive look at how widespread the damage is environmental damage has escalated especially among the poor.

And it is clearly already leading to an enormous amount of deaths which might be considered negligent mass murder if enough people took a closer look at it. One of the leading reasons that it isn't considered mass murder is because most people don't take a closer look; and this is because an enormous amount of the information is kept secret and on top of that they often create many industry funded studies which in some cases might even get more attention than the more reliable studies that don't have industry funds behind them.

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Instead of passing disclosure laws to prevent dumping toxic waste in areas where they might lead to epidemic levels of contamination making people sick or even killing them they often pass trade secrecy laws masking it harder to inform the public about dangers to their health.

If a poor person were to pollute the property of a rich person he would almost certainly be prosecuted for it; however, thanks in part to trade secrecy laws, corporate profits are protected more than the lives of those that live in areas where these corporations often dump toxic chemicals!

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Many of the worst offenses are almost certainly in third world countries. In 1991 Lawrence Summers even wrote a memo suggesting that we export pollution to less developed countries. Several people including Michael Kinsley have claimed that this memo wasn't intended as policy but to stir up debate and bring about solutions. This might be a rational defense for the memo if they actually did it instead of actually implementing it as policy. Michael Kinsley even went so far as to say that it "was obviously meant to stimulate thinking and not to be implemented as policy;" but then he went on to try to argue that it was actually a good idea and that they would be helping the poor people by implementing this policy in, "Revisiting One Lawrence Summers Controversy."

So far I haven't heard anyone claim that Michael Kinsley's article was intended to be sarcastic or stir up debate.

However this isn't limited to third word countries as several researchers including Robert Bullard, author of "Dumping in Dixie" clearly indicated in some of his research. He started by investigating pollution that was concentrated in areas populated by the poor especially African Americans in Texas; and found that there were many other areas throughout the south where the same thing was happening. One of those areas was Alsen Louisiana as indicated in the following excerpt:

Dumping in Dixie by Robert Bullard as cited in American Earth edited by Bill McKibben

Alsen is an unincorporated community located on the Mississippi river several miles north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana's state capital. The community had a population of 1,104 individuals in 1980 of whom 98/9 percent were black. Alsen developed as a rural community of black landowners to its present status as a stable, working class suburban enclave. The median income for families in 1980 was $17,188. A total of 19.4 percent of Alsen's residents are below the poverty level, a percentage well below that of blacks nationally and in Louisiana. .... The local residents have roots in the community dating back several generations.

Alsen lies at the beginning of the 85-mile industrial corridor where one-quarter of America's petrochemicals are produced. The Chemical corridor begins in Baton Rouge and follows the Mississippi River down to the southeastern rim of New Orleans. The tiny town of Alsen sits in the shadow of Huey Long's skyscraper controlled building and the towering petrochemical plants that dot the Mississippi River. This area also has been dubbed the "cancer corridor" because the air air ground and water are full of carcinogens, mutagens, and embroyotoxins. the area has been described as a "massive human experiment" and a "national sacrifice zone."

The petrochemical industry has played an important role in Louisiana's economy, especially south Louisiana. More than 165,000 persons were employed in the states petrochemical industry at its peak in 1982. this single industry accounted for one out of every three tax dollars collected by the state. The Baton Rouge area has paid a high price — industrial pollution — for the concentration of so many chemical companies in its midst. These companies discharge more than 150,000 tons of pollutants into the city's air each year. The bulk of these air pollutants are in the form of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxides, and hydrocarbons.

..... Much of this waste was shipped into south Louisiana. In 1986, the state had 33.2 percent of the nations total permitted hazardous-waste landfill capacity among active sites. Much of Louisiana's hazardous waste generated by the petrochemical industries is dumped in the Baton Rouge area. the only commercial hazardous waste site in the Baton Rouge area is the Rollins Environmental Services faculty, located adjacent to the Alsen community. The Rollins site was the fourth largest in the nation, representing 11.3 percent of remaining permitted capacity in 1986. The Rollins hazardous waste landfill and incinerator have been a constant sore point for the near by Alsen residents. the waste site has been the source of numerous odor and health complaints from the nearby community residents and workers at the plant. the plant was cited for more than 100 state and federal violations between 1980 and 1985 but did not pay any penalties. Mary McCastle, a 72 year-old grandmother and Alsen community leader, summed up her community's running battle with Rollins:

We had no warning Rollins was coming in here. When they did come in we didn't know what they were dumping. We did know that it was making us sick. People used to have nice gardens and fruit trees. They lived off their gardens and only had to buy meat. Some of us raised hogs and chickens. But not after Rollins came in. Our gardens and animals were dying out. Some days the odors from the plant would be nearly unbearable. We didn't know what was causing it. We later found out that Rollins was burning hazardous waste.

Air quality in the Alsen community became a cause for alarm. Local residents began to question the company's right to spew pollutants on their community. Complaints were filed with the Louisiana Department of Environmental quality (LDEQ) with no immediate results. Although local citizens registered their displeasure with the waste facility's operation, they got little attention from state environmental officials. Annie Bowdry, the director of the Alsen Community Center—a nonprofit human services program— described the state's response, or lack of response, to Alsen's needs:

Alsen is a black and a nowhere place stuck out in the parish. It's not incorporated. It didn't count. It was not until after state environmental officials visited the community that citizen complaints were taken seriously. State officials could not believe that people endured everyday the terrible odors from the Rollins plant.

In late 1980, residents began organizing to stop the contamination of their community. Local leaders recognized the fact that they were going up against a giant corporation. the annual revenue in Rollins from hazardous waste alone was more than $69 million. Citizens were also aware that the company provided jobs—although few Alsen residents worked at the company. Alsen residents were determined to take a stand based on what was best for the health and welfare of their community. In early 1981, local citizens filed a multimillion dollar class-action lawsuit against Rollins. The lawsuit and subsequent state monitoring of the air quality problem in Alsen forced the company to reduce the pollutants from the waste site. Public opposition to the Rollins hazardous-waste facility intensified in the mid 1980's when citizen groups and environmentalists (Greenpeace, Sierra Club, and some local grass roots groups) turned out in force to oppose an application by the firm to burn PCBs at the incinerator. the protest was successful in blocking the PCB burn.

Alsen residents were outraged that their lawsuit against Rollins dragged on for so long. Local citizens were angry that Louisiana DEQ officials took so long to believe the horror stories of Alsen's air pollution problem. They wondered why it was so difficult to resolve this problem. Admon McCastle, a native of Alsen, saw racism as the root of the community's dilemma:

More than 15 years ago, a wealthy white property owner next to Rollins received a half a million dollar settlement from the company for the death of his cattle after water spilled onto his pasture. Yet, Rollins has failed to recognize it is harming people not cows, in the Alsen community. when I look at this, I have to say racism has played a big part in the company's actions and the states inaction.

After dragging on for more than six years, the lawsuit was finally settled out of court in November 1987. The settlement, however, splintered the community. Residents were polarized into "money versus health" factions. Each plaintiff in the lawsuit received "an average of $3,000 the day before Christmas." There was a "take the money and run" atmosphere that prevailed in the battle-weary community. Opponents of the secret-settlement agreement point to the need for continual health monitoring in the community. This is not a small point since the plaintiffs were required to sign away their right to sue Rollins for any future health-related problems. Annie Bowdry lodged her opposition in the statement:

We wanted to establish a health clinic in Alsen that would be administered by the state [Louisiana] and paid for by Rollins. Since Rollins made the people sick, they should have to pay for the operation of the clinic. all at once, someone mentioned money and the health clinic proposal went out the window. My feelings about the whole thing is a dollar cannot buy my health. But if I knew I was contaminated in time, then maybe a cure for me could be found. If not for me, then maybe for my children.

Overall, life in the Alsen community has improved since residents became more informed on the hazardous waste problem and convinced state officials to closely monitor air quality in their community. although economic concessions were extracted from Rollins through and out-of-court settlement, the community was left without a health facility of its own. Moreover, the settlement agreement shielded the waste disposal company from any future health related lawsuits by the Alsen plaintiffs. Alsen residents still must drive to baton Rouge for health care services.

The community's pollution problem is far from over because numerous chemical plants are still clustered along the Mississippi river just a short distance from their homes. this problem will likely remain as long as the backbone of Louisiana's economy remains heavily dependent on its "chemical corridor." More important, increased public opposition and tougher regulations have made it more difficult to site new hazardous waste facilities. the Rollins hazardous waste landfill and incinerator, thus take on added state and regional importance.

Louisiana dubbed the "sportsman's paradise," has become and environmental nightmare as a result of lax regulations, unbridled production of toxic Chemicals, and heavy dependence on the petrochemical industry as the backbone of the state's economy.

These people almost certainly didn't receive nearly as much compensation as the toxic chemicals cost them; and furthermore, if they had known ahead of time that they were dumping these chemicals they could have acted much sooner and prevented it from polluting the area in the first place which would have been much cheaper and more effective then compensating them after the fact.

Intentionally or not, they have set the stage so that the people of this community could be used as research subjects to find out how much damage the pollution could potentially cause, possibly at the expense of their lives. However even if this was followed up and the research was done the public still isn't receiving the benefit of the research since the information isn't being passed on to the public in an effective manner and used to implement policies that would prevent this from happening. Perhaps more important is the most important thing they would learn is that it is in their best interest not to pollute the environment in the first place and they could have learned that without further research if they were willing to educate the public properly.

Without more thorough research it would be difficult to know for certain if this is typical but after looking at enough of these stories I suspect that there are many more stories like this; and while they might get better compensation in some cases where they have more political power, there are almost certainly many other cases where they don't even receive as much as the residents of Alsen did if, the corporations convince the community to give up, or they never recognize what is causing their health problems in the first place.

These incidents are routinely treated as if they're isolated and they rarely implement widespread policies to reduce these disasters, or at least not nearly as much as they could, or should, especially in poorer or minority areas. Most traditional media outlets decline to even try to do a good job reporting on these incidents; however Robert Bullard continues to investigate them even though he almost certainly doesn't have nearly as much resources as the chemical and energy companies. Another example is the following story about a more recent incident in Tennessee and Alabama where there was a spill in an area populated by mostly white people, probably lower income and the coal ash was shipped to another area populated by lower income African-Americans:

Dumping in Dixie: TVA Toxic Spill Cleaned Up and Shipped to Alabama Blackbelt

Six months ago, a wall holding back 80 acres of sludge from the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Kingston Fossil Plant broke spilling more than 500 million gallons of toxic coal fly ash over a dozen homes and up to 400 acres of the surrounding landscape, endangering aquatic life and the water supply for more than 25,000 residents.

Numerous media stories have been written about the TVA toxic spill. Yet, the full "cradle to grave" toxic waste story has gotten little coverage from the national media. Unfortunately, a major environmental injustice was perpetrated by the EPA approval of TVA's decision to ship 5.4 million cubic yards of toxic coal ash by railcar from the mostly white east Tennessee Roane County to a landfill located in the heart of the Alabama "Black Belt," Perry County (69% African-American with more than 32% of its residents living in poverty) and to rural Taylor County, Georgia (41% of the population is African-American and more than 24% of residents live in poverty). Complete article

Thanks in part, to their ability to suppress the truth with the help of trade secrecy laws and their political and legal connections energy companies routinely continue to make massive profits at the expense of peoples lives and it is much more extensive than most people realize. A recent study that covers pipeline accidents indicates that there have been many more accidents than most people are aware of and that since 1986 have resulted in nearly $7 billion in damages, more than 2,000 injuries, and more than 500 deaths. This is just from one type of disaster. In the past when I attempted to find out how many more oil rig explosions there were after the BP I did a Google search and found many more which I listed in BP is just the tip of the iceberg; and it was clear that if I kept on searching I would have found many more and that if I had access to a more comprehensive record of these disasters I might have come up with a list that would be even worse than the study of pipeline spills. In the past few years there have been even more high profile disasters including a few from just the last few months; these include the Texas fertilizer explosion, the propane explosion in Florida , the railway explosion in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, Canada , Yellowstone river pipeline leak , another two pipeline leaks in Arkansas , a Richmond, California Chevron explosion , a large Alberta, Canada pipeline leak along with a report about many more that have been happening over the past 37 years averaging 2 per day , and who knows how many more that aren't being reported properly. For every one that they do report briefly before it falls down the memory hole there are almost certainly many more that happen in foreign countries or are only reported in local areas in the United states. the disaste3rs that aren't being reported properly could be as dangerous, if not more dangerous than those that are since they aren't being addressed.

Edit 08/20/2013: Since this was posted there have been at least a couple other news stories about environmental disasters that were reported briefly and quickly fallen off the news cycle. One of them was a Natural Gas Pipeline Causing a Cornfield To Explode In Western Illinois; and anothe3r involved a propane explosion in Kansas City Missouri; however when searching for this I only found one from last February and more from previous years including Questions grow in natural gas explosion at JJ’s restaurant 02/19/2013 ; Natural Gas Pipeline Explosion Renews Fears Among Homeowners in Subdivision Near St. Louis 09/13/2010 ; 18 Hurt in Gas Explosion at Missouri Hotel 02/17/1991 ; Propane Explosion at House Kills 2, Injures 3 Lighting a Cigarette Touches off Fireball ; Propane Explosion Blasts Tiny Resort Town 08/04/1969 and more including Major Explosions & Oil Spills. Most of these are reported as isolated incidents and they're often referred to as "rare;" however when searching for more they ke3ep coming up on the internet and they might not be nearly as "rare" as the media implies. A more thorough research project would provide more information but that is difficult to fund when the corporations that profit from the industry use their influence to influence what is or is not researched and those that are more sincere have much fewer resources.



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A thorough study of how much environmental damage is being done to the planet would be a monumental task but we already have enough information to know that it is enormous and we should act more to reverse this trend now even before the research can be done.

Unfortunately instead of providing resources to reverse this or to study it more resources are being provided to preserve the status quo including biased studies financed by the energy companies and political manipulations as well. Rollins Environmental Services which was implicated in the Alsen incident has a history of funding environmental groups to go after their competition while ignoring their activities and many energy companies have even been helping to write the government's review for the Keystone pipeline! Exxon Mobil has been trying to undermine research on Climate Change for a long time, according to Steve Coll: How Exxon Shaped the Climate Debate; and there have been many other efforts by other energy companies to control the debate so that they can increase their profits at the expense of the lives of the majority. With the amount of environmental damage continuing to escalate and Climate Change as well it isn't "alarmist," as some people might imply to claim that we need drastic changes soon, without panic!

We have the technology to make many of these changes but with corporations controlling the majority of the information many people receive it could be very difficult to implement these changes unless those that re more familiar with it inform enough other people to rely more on alternative news outlets, at least until we can get major media reform and do their part to hold officials accountable.



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The following are some additional articles on the subject:

Environmental Warfare, Humanitarian Disasters, and Indirect Genocide

"We could just take what's falling free from the sky."

Code Green: One Little Letter

What If Ecocide Was a Crime? Let's Find Out

Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty: 1987­ 2007 Grass roots Struggles to Dismantle Environmental Racism in the United States

As Senate, Obama Consider Keystone, New Analysis and Video Reveal Dangerous Toll of U.S. Pipelines

BP Tries To Avoid Payments For Deepwater Horizon Disaster By Accusing Gulf Businesses Of Fraud

EPA to Allow Consumption of Toxic Fracking Wastewater by Wildlife and Livestock

UK Fracking Firm Admits They Are Causing Earthquakes

Edit: 10/15/2013 the following are a few new spills that have occurred since this article was posted. This is not complete and random searches will almost certainly tun up much more. A comprehensive search would be huge.

Experts: Gas in 2013 Gulf blowout is less damaging

North Dakota waits 11 days to tell public about oil spill

Thai oil spill spreads to new bay on resort island

Shell: New leaks close major Nigerian oil pipeline

Colorado Flooding Triggers Oil Spills, Shutdowns

NH Appeals Order to Set Aside $195M of Exxon Award

ExxonMobil Shuts California Oil Pipeline After Spill

Why Do We Have Trade Secrets? Professor Michael Risch's defense of fraud?

What justification is there for the enormous amount of corporate secrecy? Should this also apply when it comes to enormous volumes of consumer fraud or any other kind of fraud? environmental destruction? physiological manipulation, especially of children? political manipulation and activities that might threaten the democratic process?

These are all leading questions and any rational person would almost certainly say no. If someone did benefit from these activities then they might be be cautious about addressing these issues or perhaps they might claim that these is little of this type of activity going on; however there is an enormous amount of evidence that has been exposed over the decades that corporate secrecy has been used to do these things for the benefit of those that have been keeping the secrets.

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Trade secrets are often used to withhold the truth from the public about many important subjects.

Deceptive advertising is protected much more effectively than the disclosure of trade secrets that often involve fraud.

Therefore, in many cases, the first amendment provides much more protection in the mass media for corporate lies than it does for exposing fraudulent behavior.

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Trade secrecy or proprietary information laws aren't the only contributing factor to these problems; there are also attorney client privilege, political access to those that make the laws, propaganda and other related subjects which may contribute to it but trade secret laws are part of it. This could raise the question, why do we have trade secrets that are protected by law instead of disclosure laws that might help workers and consumers access the information they need to make informed decisions?

How has the media and the political establishment addressed these questions in the past?

This seems to be relatively simple; for the most part they act as if it is a given that these laws are justified and rarely even discuss it avoiding the need to inform the public about any justification. Instead some people might get the impression that this is a a sacrosanct right for corporations and that consumers and workers shouldn't be entitled to access the information they need to make decisions.

Of course the political establishment and the media never phrase it this way; instead they often say that the free market system is successful because the consumer has the ability to make informed decisions. However the trade secrecy laws, often referred to as proprietary information laws, may prevent people from actually having the information they need to make decisions. In many cases they rely on the information that the corporations give them, a large amount of which is in the form of deceptive advertising. The cost of these ads is routinely passed on to consumers and in a competitive market then corporations might have an incentive to keep these costs down or they won't be able compete. That's the theory anyway. In the current market the majority of corporations have gone through an enormous amount of consolidation and many of them have dramatically increased their bureaucratic expenses which they pass on to consumers including advertising, lobbying, shipping, consulting, and legal expenses including an enormous amount of efforts to keep people from knowing what they're doing.

At the same time they've been cutting many of their manufacturing expenses to the bone. This has even led to fires in sweatshops and collapsed buildings that have killed the workers that make our products. Part of the reason this has happened is that the corporations have claimed that trade secrecy laws protect their rights to disclose where their factories are so that they can remain competitive, or so they claim.

Another major problem is that over the past thirty years while they've been cutting these manufacturing expenses and increasing their bureaucratic expenses the typical quality of many products has been deteriorating. Sneakers that used to last close to two years now fall apart in under six months, or at least some of them do; fortunately as a result of consumer backlash some retailers finally partially reversed this process so they might last closer to a year again but they're still not as good as the product that we used to be able to buy. The fact that the deterioration of the quality of products has happened with most if not all manufacturing and retailers should raise some doubts about whether or not the "free market" system really is working as it is supposed to. Regardless of whether it is working it is virtually guaranteed that trade secrecy laws have enabled this, at least partially. At the same time they have increased their spending on advertising to convince consumers that they're getting good products when they're not.

Whether trade secrecy laws were intended to do this or not they have been partially responsible for it and this isn't even being considered in a high profile manner anywhere as far as I can tell. I have addressed this more in a past blog, Is Wal-Mart driving planned obsolescence? and additional blogs under the author tag "A small success against planned obsolescence" which is cited in that post. It includes reviews of many products and how they have deteriorated. Part of the reason that many consumers didn't notice might be because corporations have been using trade secrecy laws to gradually reduce their quality. At the same time they might have been conducting research into consumer complacency and how effective their advertising has been at convincing consumers they're getting their money's worth when they're not. this information might be protected by trade secrecy laws whether or not this was the intent of those laws.

This should raise doubts about whether or not trade secrecy laws are being used to increase fraud. Even tough the political establishment and the commercial media hardly pay attention to this their have apparently been some academic professors and lawyers and presumably lobbyists and consultants that have been addressing this and making some justification for these laws although most people are almost certainly not aware of it. One of these professors is Professor Michael Risch who wrote Why Do We Have Trade Secrets? PDF , an article defending the use of trade secrecy laws. He does not attempt to address some of the problems that I have cited, as far as I can tell; instead he declines to mention them. However it is almost certainly a major problem and as far as I can tell few of the people that are involved in this discussion or policy decisions are doing much if anything to represent workers, consumers, environmental protection, psychological manipulation of children and yet all of this is impacted by corporate secrecy. It could be argued that the laws weren't intended to defend these problems but they've been going on long enough that it should be clear that they are and failure to address them should at a minimum be considered negligence.

When Googling "justification for trade secrets" this article is one of the first ones to come up but it isn't the only one, including a few listed below, and a relatively quick look at the other ones indicates that although they're not exactly the same they don't address what I would consider the most obvious problems with trade secrecy laws any more than the commercial media. As far as I am concerned all of these people that make a case for their beliefs, including Michael Risch, do a better job than the commercial media and the political system even if I don't agree with them because at least they're showing how they came to their conclusions and i think that they should receive more attention from the commercial media along with more diverse views although I don't expect the commercial media or the political system to do any such thing unless they're pressured from below.

One of the most important justifications that is often used for trade secrets is the claim that they're "intellectual property" which have value that the owner should be allowed to protect. This might seem reasonable when it comes to the formula for Coca-Cola, which is one of the examples that he cites; but when it comes to the possibility that they might be gradually reducing the quality of their products to save money in manufacturing expenses and force many consumers to replace things much more often their "intellectual property" is also consumer fraud. Also when it comes to psychological research into marketing to children and manipulating them through advertising and other means this "intellectual property" involves interfering with the well being of children which I have attempted to address in posts including Proprietary information is, by definition, a conspiracy and blogs about marketing to kids (author tag). Similar examples could include environmental destruction safety in food and other issues and interfering with the democratic process. In order to find out whether many of these apply we would have to have access to these trade secrets, which we don't; however there have been enough leaks of problems to indicate that a lot of their "intellectual property" involves just that, the use of secrecy for profit at the expense of the public.

This issue should be discussed much more in public and all those that are impacted by it should be allowed to participate in the decision making, whether it is based on Michael Risch article or other reviews of the subject. As it stands the majority of those that have been involved in the decision making on this subject are those that benefit from secrecy, while the majority of the public remains unaware of the impact.

The following are some of what I consider the most important issues that he raised and my responses; for those that might be skeptical of my views or that might want to use their own judgement feel free to read the article first in it's entirety.

Trade secrets differ from other forms of intellectual property in many ways. The most significant difference is the role of public disclosure. Copyright law and patent law are founded on the notion that creativity and innovation, respectively, are rewarded by limited governmental protection to facilitate recoupment of the costs of creation. Furthermore, the policies of patent and copyright law favor building on prior work, as well as freedom for all to use subject matter that is outside the scope of protection. 37 Trade secrets are treated exactly opposite—the trade secret owner is rewarded for keeping information that is neither new nor original away from the public for an unlimited duration. Thus, information that could not be patented or copyrighted is still protected for as long as the owner can keep the information secret. These differences lead to two criticisms of trade secret law. First, there is a lack of public benefit due to the lack of information sharing. Second, there is little or no marginal incentive to innovate because the owner obtains protection of the information by keeping it secret even in the absence of the law. This Article addresses these criticisms below. .....

Although I don't agree with the growing use of patent and copyright laws especially when it is partially subsidized by the government including research into developing pharmaceuticals, at least they make their information public so researchers can access the information being partially controlled to assess whether or not the justification is reasonable. As previously indicated this isn't possible when the government makes laws to defend secrecy. This provides an incentive to require people to sign nondisclosure agreements which have often been used to silence people that attempt to disclose corrupt activities, most notably, perhaps, when Jeffery Wigand was threatened for exposing dangerous tactics by the tobacco companies, as well as what is considered reasonable trade secrets. It also leads to an enormous amount of expense trying to restrict the spread of important infor5mation that people need to make decision. When this expense is carried out by large and powerful corporation that have dominant market position they can use their market dominance to pass these expenses on to the consumers without providing a benefit for those that ultimately pay for them.

In an oft cited case, the U.S. Supreme Court had an opportunity to address this state law issue and both affirmed that trade secrets could be property and left the issue up to the states. 91 In Ruckelshaus, pesticide manufacturer Monsanto challenged, as a Fifth Amendment taking, a statute that allowed the Environmental Protection Agency to disclose its trade secret data to the public. 92 The Court determined that under Missouri law, which followed the Restatement (First) of Torts at the time, trade secrets were property, and thus could be subject to a taking. 93 In doing so, the Court relied in part on a Missouri case decided in 1917, 94 which makes sense because the shift from “property” to “unfair competition” around the time of Masland had not yet become widespread. .......

By being "subject to a taking" a taking because it is "property" I assume it is referring to the eminent domain process which would also require justification and compensation. If there was no better way to handle this then this might be a reasonable method but there clearly is a better way to handle this. Monsanto has a long history of using trade secrecy to hide their activities even when it might impact the health of the public. This means that they are essentially using the public as human research subjects for their own profit. That would effectively mean that they're treating the public as a form of "property" which they can use for research the same way they use guinea pigs as property in a research lab. When the health of the public is at stake their should be no justification for trade secrecy for a corporation working for their own profit while claiming to provide a public benefit even though various studies not financed by Monsanto have raised major doubts. These studies have been done despite trade secrecy laws and without them they would be much more reliable and better able to protect the public.

As a result, trade secret law (or even secrecy without the law) does not necessarily confer an opportunity for the owner to charge more than would be available on the open market. 136 In fact, to the extent that trade secrets reduce production costs, they would lead to lower pricing in the market. A trade secret must have competitive value, but every company has information that has competitive value. Take customer lists, for example. Knowing who to contact will reduce costs of sales vis a vis a company’s competitors. This fact does not mean that a company can extract monopoly pricing; while the company may have a “leg up,” product quality and pricing will still affect competition.

The assumption that trade secrecy would lead to lower prices depends on the nature of the secret and whether or not the market really is as free as many people claim it is. If the trade secret involves research into consumer complacency then it could lead to higher prices; or if it involves predatory pricing to eliminate the competition then the lower prices tend to be lower and once the consumers lack the advantage of competition their benefits from the free market. With all the mergers and acquisitions that have been going on for decades trade secrecy laws may have enabled an enormous amount of consolidation and there is now much less competition than there used to be creating an oligarchy system that has been partially enabled by secrecy. With this system, even if there isn't conclusive evidence of collusion or price fixing, there is a common system of motivation for the corporations that remain which encouraging them to increase their profit margins by declining to participate in price wars that might interfere with their profits. This might not quite be dividing up the market without real competition but it is very close. Instead of competing with price or quality they often compete with advertising methods that are controlling the information the public receives about their products and are taking up a steadily growing percentage of the GDP. If the customer winds up paying for the growing cost of advertising as a cost of business then they're essentially paying for the deceptive lies that have been used to control their decisions and they receive no benefit, thanks partially to trade secrecy laws.

The same is true for a secret process for making goods. Assume there is a secret process for making food taste better or making a widget more cheaply. Producers compete with other food and widget makers, and they still have price competition. Their competitors will have their own methods for taste enhancement and cost reduction. ......

Trade secrecy laws rarely seem to take into consideration whether or not a potential process for making food taste better might affect their health. This is often ignored until an outbreak of food poisoning. We have had at least two of these recalls recently including A Bagged Salad Recall and a Beef Recall; but thanks to trade secrecy laws the "intellectual property" of corporations appears to be more important than the health of the public. Trade secrecy may also increase the centralization of the control of food as well; which might sacrifice the benefits of factory or farm direct sales keeping cost down so that profits can go up. When it comes to making products cheaper one of the most popular ways to do this seems to be to suppress wages and reduce safety in the factories. This is often accompanied by increased distribution and shipping costs and lower quality products. so the owners of "Trade Secrets" increase profits by violating human rights and depriving the public of quality merchandise without proving much if any lower costs.

The end result of each of the above utilitarian “justifications” that give moral force to the labor theory is an increased incentive to develop information that becomes a trade secret. If exclusive use were to be eliminated (or if owners were forced to share their secrets with the world), the incentive to create would certainly decrease, even if not entirely.

This isn't necessarily true. When it comes to creativity many artists writers or engineers do it because they like and they often do so because they want to contribute to society as well. social research projects have been done into similar things including the "prisoners dilemma" and other projects where people have been given incentives to contribute to the well being of the group. In the "prisoners dilemma" multiple prisoners have been kept apart as part of a divide and rule tactic and they turned against each other when the investigators lacked evidence to convict either. If two prisoners had known and operated they could have both gotten off but they often both tern on each other and get convicted. In this case it might work in the favor of society, or at least it might seem to. However in many other cases they have found that if people have been given incentive to cooperate they all benefit even if it isn't exactly even. the best example of this might be creative commons where anyone can use work as long as they make their contribution along with the material they take from others available to the public.

When it comes to methods that improve production this could also work. Two different corporations could develop improvements and they could both benefit from both while competing in other ways. thanks to corporate espionage this is already happening only in a less efficient manner but small companies are being left out and trade secrecy laws are often helping to wipe out these small companies leading to consolidation and less choice. the small companies are often run by more innovative people which means that when they go out of business instead of encouraging innovation they destroy it in many cases.

Contractarian theories relate to hypothetical bargaining of a set of rules by hypothetical individuals who have an interest in the outcome. The result of such bargaining is theoretically normatively justified by ex ante agreements to be bound by a set of rules. John Rawls popularized one such contractarian theory called the “veil of ignorance.” 159 The veil of ignorance is a hypothetical “state of nature” that predates the distribution of rights in which the people making the decision about the distribution do not know what position they will occupy after the distribution is complete. Rawls suggests that those forming a society under the veil of ignorance would implement the “maximin” principle— namely selecting a distribution of wealth that maximizes the wealth of the person with the least. 160 This seems reasonable if one accepts the right assumptions—that people operating in ignorance would want to make sure that if they turn out to be the least well off, then they would not be destitute. 161 Landes and Posner thus argue that companies would agree to allow reverse engineering because of the benefits such a rule might bring to everyone in the industry.

Professor Bone criticizes contractarian theories in general on the grounds that “real world” companies would protest following the agreements made during hypothetical negotiations by those who do not share their “real world” preferences. 163 His argument highlights many of the problems with contractarian theory in general, such as that their moral force is too dependent on the constraints on hypothetical bargaining—especially as those constraints relate to those in the real world who would prefer a free market to determine such rules.

Despite this criticism, one particular set of bargaining constraints can shed light on the issue—namely the “veil of ignorance.” Under the veil, the “founders” would not know what position they would occupy, and thus the rules they might agree to are determined to be fair and just. From a moral standpoint, it is irrelevant what real world people would agree to in order for these rules to have normative support. Because debate about rules will always be biased by real world positions, any statements about the justification of rules will be biased as well. The goal, however difficult it might be to achieve through thought experiments, is to determine what someone might agree to if he or she did not know his or her lot in life while making the decision.

This leads to a more specific criticism of the veil of ignorance in particular—there is no reason to believe that any particular distribution of rights associated with trade secrets would be the outcome. 165 Why, for example, is reverse engineering allowed? Why is unjust enrichment a measure of damages? Why is improper means broader than common law wrongs? There is no reason to believe that any of the above choices should be the outcome, or perhaps all of them could be a just outcome.

Even if the current set of rules cannot be predicted, veil of ignorance analysis is still useful from a normative point of view. One might be able to consider the balancing those in the original position might have considered given the current set of rules. This may be sufficient for justifying the existence of trade secret law. After all, even with efficiency analysis we have no way of knowing whether a particular rule really is the most efficient in all circumstances. For example, if one assumes that people value that which they create more than others do, but at the same time that people want to build on the work of others, it is well within the bounds of reason that some form of limited protection of trade secrets would be the outcome of a negotiation under the veil of ignorance.

The “veil of ignorance" hypothesis might make a certain amount of sense if it worked in the real word since people wouldn't have an incentive to rig the system if they didn't know which way to rig it. However this is rarely the case and it might be more effective to enable everyone to participate in the process of setting up the rules. With the current political system this isn't the case since the same people that control trade secrecy also have access to the politicians that make laws about trade secrets and the majority of the public doesn't have the information they need to participate thanks, in part, to trade secrecy laws.

This means trade secrecy laws threaten the democratic process.

C. Populist Justification

A final possible justification of trade secret law is populist support. 166 In short, the majority (or rather the majority’s representatives) in nearly all states support some protection through legislation. For some, this might be sufficient justification. When trade secret law was judge-made law, one could dismiss populism or other forms of “public choice” as a justification. Now, however, with so many state legislatures independently enacting trade secret statutes, it is pretty clear that trade secret law is supported by the masses. 167 It may be that the labor value theory of trade secrets as property underlies populist support.

However, the public has in the past (and even currently) supported morally repugnant and/or economically inefficient laws. 168 Additionally, it is not clear that the public in general has an interest in how trade secrets are implemented; it is not as if product pricing and corporate profits can be directly traced to trade secrets even if secrets may have some effect. 169 More interesting, then, is determining why it is that legislatures choose to have trade secret law. 170 After all, there are a variety of efficient and morally worthy ideas that never make it into law.

From a political economy point of view, those that have much to gain from trade secret law will likely push for its passage, while those that do not have an interest will not oppose it. 171 Thus, it is no surprise that trade secret law was added to the legislative agenda and subsequently adopted. 172 However, criticism that the current form of trade secret law is simply the result of lobbying by powerful companies desiring to protect their secrets 173 is unfounded for three principal reasons. First, trade secrets are much cheaper to obtain and do not grant the absolute exclusive right that patents do. 174 As a result, one would expect small companies to favor trade secret protection over large companies. In fact, this is the case. 175 Second, in general, companies have trade secrets and also want to learn the secrets of other companies; as a result, one might expect that, in general, “industry” would seek to protect trade secrets and that “industry” would also seek exceptions for reverse engineering or other methods of learning information. 176 Third, trade secrets arose from the common law, not the political process, and thus their later political acceptance in forty-five separate jurisdictions is unlikely to be solely driven by interest groups, though those groups obviously had a role in putting trade secrets on the agenda. ......

The assumption that "trade secret law is supported by the masses" because the "majority’s representatives" pass the laws falls apart quickly under scrutiny when you wonder if the majority is aware of what their representatives have been doing. If you asked the average person if they were familiar with trade secrecy laws they almost certainly would not be since there is little or not effort to inform the majority of it. if you asked people if they should be allowed to know if the products they've been buying are gradually becoming lower quality and falling apart sooner or if their food is potentially more dangerous they would almost certainly say they should. Yet trade secret laws prevent this. If on the other hand the people that present them information control it and ask them if they should be able to keep their private live secret they would say yes, presumably, and they might agree that others should as well and this could be used as a propaganda method to justify trade secrets. that might not be the best or most effective method corporation use; a more likely example might be that they present it as if the person being asked has the opportunity to advance thanks to their own secrets. there are many other methods that have been used but the problem is that the people controlling the debate also have the information they need to make their decisions while the majority doesn't so the "Populist Justification" Michael Risch cites isn't an informed populist justification therefore it is seriously flawed.

His claim that "those that have much to gain from trade secret law will likely push for its passage, while those that do not have an interest will not oppose it," is much closer to the truth but it is also flawed since the majority doesn't have the information they need to realize they have an interest in opposing it so their representatives, who often collect campaign contributions from corporations, often pass these laws without accountability since the public isn't paying attention.

If there was informed populist participation then the public might be outraged by how much they have been losing by epidemic levels of fraud and they might be screaming to have politicians and businessmen put in jail for their activities, or at least elect representatives that change the system. This hasn't happened yet because eh same people that control trade secrets also control the propaganda that is given to the public about their representatives and withhold coverage of sincere candidates or ridicule them as "unelectable."

Critics might argue that trade secret law imposes a cost by keeping valuable information from the public,185 which is directly contrary to the conventionally understood policies of copyright 186 and patent law. However, this particular social cost is minimal because the information would already be kept secret by the owner in the absence of trade secret law while others would attempt to discover the same information independently. 187 The marginal cost of protecting secret information is that those who would use “improper means” 188 cannot obtain that information and must duplicate innovation. 189 This is especially pronounced where former employees must “recreate the wheel” or, even worse, where employees with experience are not assigned to key projects because of the risk of use of confidential information. As discussed below, this marginal cost is likely outweighed by the benefits of protection, especially considering the fact that “duplicate innovation” or reverse engineering may lead to improvements better than the first secret. 190

The discussion thus far has assumed that because the information has value to the owner, there should be some protection. This might not necessarily be true; perhaps it would be more efficient if competitors could simply take what information they want without repercussion, or even if every company were forced to disclose its information. There are bound to be times when the cost of such activity is well justified by the value of such secrets, and the competitor might even be able to make better use of the information so that society will be better off. The subsections below test the alternatives, namely “forced disclosure” and “no liability.”

High cost forced disclosure would relate to disclosure of information that is not easily shared in a timely manner, such as detailed customer information, pricing, product roadmaps, and other ephemeral or unwritten information. 192 In practice, high cost forced disclosure would fail because enforcement and administration costs would be sufficiently high that information producers would risk nondisclosure. 193 Additionally, owners would be more likely to keep information in memory rather than in writing, which would likely make the information less valuable to its owner with no offsetting benefit.

Ironically while trying to justify trade secrecy laws Michael Risch seems to have made a few good points for the opposite. With all the efforts to hide things and recreate the same work in multiple places without additional information many people would be doing the same work over and over again which would be extremely inefficient as a society. If their were no laws protecting trade secrets and when it effects fraud or health there were laws requiring disclosure then it would save people a lot of trouble and the economic system would be more efficient for everyone. If there is some justifiable value to the owner of information then it seems much more reasonable for them to rely on reasonable copyright or patent laws, either that or find a socialist way of compensating them with grants of some sort. this might have details to work out but it is much better than the enormous amount of effort to ensure that most people don't have the information they need to make decisions.

Michael Risch expressed concern about high cost forced disclosure but it is almost certainly much more expensive to prevent disclosure. If you Google "Trade Secrets lawsuit" you'll find that there is an enormous amount of effort going into this already. They often discuss the cost of pursuing the lawsuits but discussion about court costs or in some cases prison costs for stealing trade secrets aren't discussed as much. Are the tax payers paying for this or are the corporations that benefit from it paying the court cost? there is little or no effort to inform the public about this and it is almost certainly adding to the deficit; which means that the public is paying part of the legal costs to deprive them of the information they need to make decisions. If the public knew they were subsidizing fraud and potential safety hazards they would almost certainly be outraged unless they were fed propaganda to confuse the issue.

as for the cost of forced disclosure it would almost certainly be much lower especially if they provided protection for employees who want to disclose it. In most cases they might not need to spend much money to enforce it although they might pass laws threatening the corporations and board members with fines or in extreme cases with jail if it is necessary as a deterrent. The corporations would no longer be able to require nondisclosure agreements in most if not all cases and with the help of sincere people it would be much easier to enforce. Instead of persecuting sincere whistle blowers they should be protected and the public would be protected as well when information about fraud or safety hazards is exposed much more easily.

One of the most blatant examples of how trade secret laws combined with false advertising can manipulate the political system and encourage the voters to vote against their own best interest based on false information is the recent ballot initiative to label GMOs in California.



Photo source

Monsanto was able to keep most of their activities secret thanks to trade secret laws and they created a deceptive advertising campaign to convince the public that the initiative would drive up the cost of food among other things. this implies if not states that they would be forced to pass on the cost of labeling to the consumer, which is true. However it is also true that the consumer would have a benefit from this expense that would enable them to make better decisions. Furthermore it is also true that they have to add on the cost of other business expenses to the consumers including the cost of their deceptive political ads as well as the cost of their deceptive regular ads and their lobbying expenses. They simply declined to mention this. the implication is that consumers should be required to pay indirectly for the cost of deception which makes their choices worse but they should not be required to pay the much lower cost of disclosing the truth which improves their lives.

The hypocrisy is mind-boggling. By controlling the information with the help of trade secret laws they were able to convince the public to vote against their best interest.

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The following are additional related articles including some other views on Trade Secrets:

Wikipedia: Trade secret

Michael Risch joined the Villanova from Stanford Law School

Trade Secrets and the Justification of Intellectual Property Lynn Sharp Paine

Trade Secrets, Unjust Enrichment, and the Classification of Obligations By James W. Hill

Trade Secret Misappropriation - $taggering Numbers For Employers to Consider

A Trade Secret Approach to Protecting Traditional Knowledge