Charge people, not just companies

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said Thursday it expects to face federal criminal charges stemming from the 2010 natural gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno.
The company said in a statement it is in negotiations with the U.S. Attorney's office but "now expects the U.S. Attorney will charge that PG&E's past operating practices violated the federal Pipeline Safety Act in areas such as record keeping, pipeline integrity management and identification of pipeline threats."

The aftermath of the 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline explosion.

A host of scathing reports in the wake of the blast put the blame squarely on PG&E, including one from the National Transportation Safety Board accusing the utility of "baffling" mistakes, a "litany of failures" and spotty oversight. The NTSB said, for example, it took PG&E nearly 95 minutes to shut off the gas spewing from the broken San Bruno pipeline.
That explosion and the fires it caused killed eight people and destroyed 38 homes.
The utility, which last year announced it would pay out $565 million in legal settlements, said in its Thursday statement that the "criminal charges are not merited and that PG&E employees did not intentionally violate the federal Pipeline Safety Act."
That's right, and drunken drivers don't intentionally kill others when they climb behind the wheel and end up bashing into an innocent family. Nevertheless, we hold them responsible because they should have known the potential for harm.
PG&E knew, or should have known, the potential for disaster on the 54-year-old San Bruno pipeline was real. It knows, or should know, that it has similar disasters-in-waiting along many parts of its vast natural gas distribution system.
Of course the utility didn't intend for the pipeline to explode. The company just chose to ignore the problem despite being warned by some of its own workers. It made a calculated economic determination it was cheaper to take a chance than to properly maintain the aging pipeline.
And that brings up the other problem: why in these situations is it always the company facing charges? Despite the determination in some quarters that a company is a person, any company is made up of people who manage it and set its policies. Why are those responsible for ignoring this problem or those who set up the policies making that inattention possible not being held accountable?
When a company is charged criminally, there almost always is a fine imposed. No person pays the fine. The company or its shareholders or, ultimately, its customers pay. Ignoring for the moment the bad press a company must endure, holding companies rather than individuals responsible cynically allows the whole thing to be reduced to little more than the cost of doing business.
That's unfair. It was unfair recently when Toyota was allowed to pay a fine for misleading customers and regulators for years about safety defects in its vehicles, but no company official was charged. It will be unfair if General Motors is simply allowed to pay a fine for ignition switch problems, known about for a decade by company officials. And it will be unfair if PG&E managers escape with the defense, "gee, we didn't intend to kill anyone."