Statutes of Limitation and Subcellular Injury: Time and Knowledge Production in the Taiwan RCA Litigation

• In Event: Time-Scapes of Toxicity (2): Time of Knowing

Abstract

An appeal court in Taiwan has ruled in November 2017 in favor of former workers of Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in their lawsuit against their employer and its foreign parent companies for health injuries caused by chemical exposure at the workplace. The court has adopted very progressive opinions on several vital legal issues that have been hampering legal actions of victims of industrial toxic exposure throughout the world: causation in mixed toxic exposure, standard of proof, burden of proof of the litigants, the “corporate veil” of transnational corporations, and so on. Especially relevant to the issue of time is its ruling that the defendant companies cannot use statutes of limitation as a defense. The court made this decision by taking into consideration a more sophisticated understanding of the current state of science, and the social process of knowledge production in science. It takes time, especially when the injury is on a subcellular scale, for health effects of a chronic exposure to manifest itself into diagnosable diseases, and further time for patients, doctors and scientists to become aware of the collective nature of such diseases. Withholding information held by the employer or polluter delays or prevents discovery of occupational and environmental disease, hence defendant companies who do so cannot use statutes of limitation as defense. This progressive ruling was resulted from persistent collective efforts of many people, including members of the STS community in Taiwan.

Author

• Hsin-Hsing Chen, Shih-Hsin University Graduate Institute for Social Transformation Studies