this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2024
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So basically the corporate equivalent of slipping a traffic cop a $100, then him conveniently deciding that you're free to go.
One has to wonder why corporations are fined such low amounts, in a just world these big corps would be fined in the tens of billions at the lowest.
Because the low amount is the just amount minus what they paid to the people making decisions.
It’s more like paying the ticket without ever showing up in court. And at least where I live, I can do that.
No - it's actually not like that at all.
Google didn't pay that money just to bypass the formalities along the way to paying a fixed fine - they paid it in order to head off the possibility that they were going to face a jury trial instead of a bench trial, since juries are far more likely to vote in favor of much bigger fines than judges are.
I don't think it's about the fines, it's about the cost for Google to fight in court and perhaps setting precedent. It's often just cheaper to pay the fine.
The prosecution's own expert estimated that the amount that was paid was the maximum they could expect to get.
More like saying to the judge "What's the max you can charge me? Alright, here's the money, let's skip the court bullshit." in this case.
Mm... no. It's really not.
The specific point of all of this was that Google wanted to avoid a jury trial, and the specific reason that they wanted to avoid a jury trial is because a jury trial is much more likely to end up with a much bigger judgment against them. A judge in a bench trial will follow established precedent to arrive at a reasonable penalty, while a jury can and often will essentially arbitrarily decide that they should be fined eleventy bajillion dollars for being assholes.
So their goal with this payment was pretty much exactly the same as the goal of the motorist who slips a traffic cop a bribe to get out of a ticket - to entice someone with immediate cash in order to avoid potentially having to pay much more somewhere down the line.
Except it's not a bribe. It's entirely above-board, the money they're paying is a fine. They're not "getting out of a ticket", they're paying the ticket.
Except they also don't get points on their license, or whatever is analogous here.
They paid what the jury could have imposed and now they're skipping right ahead to facing the judge, they're actually saving the system some time and money.
The trial is still going to happen.
a fine is a price.
Just pointing out that it's extremely different from trying to bribe a cop.
More like seventy five cents, given Google's profit margins.