So, as an English Lit. major embarking on a business heavy profession, there are times that the learning curve seems embarrassingly steep. I might have to start boning up.
Case in point:
Today, while I was attending a lecture on international law that offered free pizza, Mr. X described how the DNA/gene manufacturing firm that he counsels had been served notice of a complaint. Though his company is headquartered in the U.S., it has offices in Sweden as well. The complaint, filed in Sweden, alleged that his company had committed the crime of dumping.
At this point Mr. X looked at the people in attendance (roughly seven of us), and said, "You all know what dumping is right?" I immediately pictured a large dump truck emptying greenish ooze into a river populated by three-eyed fish. "Let me put it a different way, does anyone NOT know what dumping is?" he continued.
Me to self-- this seems like a trick question. Should I raise my hand, thereby verifying my green ooze hypothesis, or nod knowingly, thereby blending in with the rest of my knowledgeable peers? Surely if my conception is flawed, this flaw will be rectified by the speaker in a matter of moments with no loss of credibility to myself. The hand stays down.
"Ok then," Mr. X continues, "who can explain it to me?"
Uh oh. He looks in my direction. I quickly look away but he finds my patent avoidance of eye contact suspicious. He points at me "Go ahead."
Me: "Well, I guess when you dispose of materials in ways that you shouldn't."
Mr. X: "No. Wrong," he says. He then launches into a lengthy explanation of why it is so much easier to correct law students than undergraduates. Undergraduates are weak and take it personally, law students are resilient and indifferent to criticism, he explains. I laugh heartily and wipe away a tear forming in the corner of my eye. Surely now, after I have failed him, an explanation of dumping will be forthcoming.
Mr. X: "Suppose you are accusing me of dumping in your country, what am I doing?"
Me? Again? Really? His eyes are on me again. I quickly file through the definitions of dumping I am familiar with. There's the green ooze theory previously posited. That's not right. I'm only familiar with one other meaning of the word dumping, and I'm fairly sure that offering that explanation would not be appropriate in this context.
Me to self: time is ticking. . . think think think. . . use law words.
Me-- "I'm accusing you of infringing on some kind of property interest that I'm claiming?"
Mr. X: "This is what I love about lawyers, when they don't know, they still try to make things up."
Bingo. Not just lawyers though. Before I was in law school I was a liar too.
He then asks if anyone else can explain this concept. The hands of the six others in attendance shoot-up in unison, as if a kindergarten teacher had asked the students what their favorite color was. Have you no shame?
(Note: to extend this analogy, when the teacher asked me what my favorite color was, I replied: "motorcycle.")
The answer, which I will never, ever forget for the rest of my life? Basically predatory pricing.
Here is the Wikipedia definition of dumping under the entry "dumping (pricing policy)":
"In economics, "dumping" can refer to any kind of predatory pricing. However, the word is now generally used only in the context of international trade law, where dumping is defined as the act of a manufacturer in one country exporting a product to another country at a price which is either below the price it charges in its home market or is below its costs of production."
In my defense, Mr. X didn't actually say "What is dumping in an economic sense?" If this were the case, I probably would have pieced it together. Now that it's been explained, I admit that I've seen and heard of "dumping" used in this context before, though I've never studied the topic in any kind of formal sense.
Also in my defense, there is another entry right under "dumping (pricing policy)" entitled: "environmental dumping." Here is the definition in Wikipedia for evironmental Dumping:
Environmental dumping is the practice of transfrontier shipment of waste (household waste, industrial/nuclear waste, etc.) from one country to another. The goal is to take the waste to a country that has less strict environmental laws, or environmental laws that are not strictly enforced.
In this context, it's not so outrageous that a biotech company that specializes in creating DNA could get into trouble for environmental dumping.
There are all sorts of problems involved in GM foods contaminating the fields of others; do these same kind of problems happen in the biotech industry? Doesn't seem likely, but I really wouldn't know.
Anyway, the story ends with the biotech company losing millions of dollars in pointless litigation even though the claims were scandalously weak and indefensible. Eventually, the firm raised its prices in a "price undertaking," a kind of settlement under the WTO, and was allowed to remain in Sweden.
All in all a very well told story with lots of suspense and quite a bit of information about the often confusing and labyrinthine international system of adjudication. It even had a tidy little moral at the end that I thin we can all learn a little something from:
"Even if you don't shit on a foreign market, you might get accused of dumping."
No comments:
Post a Comment