Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
This is why you're driving me nuts! 
To me, it's obvious where the progression starts--with the company willfully failing to provide any safeguards for the women who were dealing with a potentially dangerous substance. And you keep coming back and making excuses for them--they didn't know, it was something/ new, they thought it was safe in small quantities, etc. But they should have known there was at least a possibility of the radium-infused paint being dangerous to the women who were ingesting it. |
At the risk of being the cold-blooded lawyer in the room... Why should they have known? Women were coming and going all the time, many to get married or care for others. There was no reporting scheme like we think of with OSHA or other agencies. There is little proof, at the outset, that every single woman who became ill, much less many of them, connected their illness to their work and reported it to their employer.
I grant the point that if the men were in lead aprons, etc., that they should have considered some protection for the women. But that does not logically follow that they should have known that they were making women ill. I am not willing to grant that the company knew that they were making masses of women ill.
"Should have known" is an awfully hard legal standard to meet, especially when you are on the cutting edge of science.