It was a similar deal with a company (CSR) that ran some asbestos mining operations here in Australia. Throughout the fifties and sixties the company had been informed multiple times of the links between asbestos and mesothelioma, but they chose to ignore the research, and continued operations without adequate ventilation, dust suppression, masks or any other acknowledgement that the people working with asbestos may have long term health problems. A doctor who visited the minesite at Wittenoom in 1957 advised CSR that the risk was extremely high that workers would have major health problems.
In the 80's and 90's, law suits started coming out claiming against the company. These cases were dragged out over as much time as CSR could wrangle. In the end, the desired result was achieved, most of the claimants died of asbestos related lung diseases. Eventually some of the suits were continued by the surviving relatives, and the company had to pay out considerable damages. Probably not a patch on the amount of loot they would have made out of asbestos in the first place.
CSR is still trading.
I agree with Kate. If a company denies liability, and in fact creates a product that is known to them to be unsafe or dangerous but continues telling the world how safe it is just to turn a buck for the shareholders, they need to be brought down. Whether that's through litigation, or some other way, they need to be accountable for their decisions, on a PERSONAL level as well as a corporate level. Too many corporate executives make completely unethical or illegal decisions to pad out their bonuses. They quit, move on to another company, and then the original company wears the repercussions of their lack of ethics.
It bugs the hell out of me.
Oh, and the shareholders of such companies have a huge responsibility to demand ethical decisions be made by the company. There's no point sitting on your shares and complaining about how the world is going to pieces, when there's a shareholders meeting coming up. But unfortunately piping up at a shareholder's meeting doesn't make you many friends there, and has the potential to decrease your returns.