Declarations

Company Ransom

“We have been duped into thinking that these AIG employees have some kind of secret code that no other employee could discover if they were hired to replace them and therefore they are able to basically hold the company ransom.”

—Cornelius Hurley, director of the Morin Center for Banking and Financial Law at Boston University, to Reuters after Anastasia Kelly, a top executive at American International Group Inc., resigned because of pay curbs imposed by the Obama Administration’s pay czar. Kelly, AIG’s vice chairman for legal, human resources, corporate affairs and corporate communications, resigned effective Dec. 30 for “good reason” and is eligible for $2.8 million in severance pay under the terms of the company’s executive severance plan.

Dirty Business

“While this law is somewhat controversial, it actually makes perfect sense. If one of Facebook’s 350 million members goes online and posts a statement in the middle of the night which turns out to be defamatory, should we really hold Facebook responsible for that? If we did, online social networking sites would not exist.”

—The Dirty.com operator Hooman Karamian to The Associated Press, defending his gossip Web site that is being sued by a Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader who also works as a school teacher in Kentucky for libel over a posting that she says falsely claims she was exposed to two venereal diseases.

Spill Costs

“We have to come up with those plans; we have to then submit to the insurance companies what those plans are and what the costs are, and then they will come back and set a time when they can sit down and discuss that insurance with us.”

—Tennessee Valley Authority to Nashville Public Radio spokesperson Barbara Martocci explaining that insurance could still cover some of the costs of cleanup of the coal ash spill at its Kingston plant in December of 2008. But TVA has had to come up with detailed cleanup plans first.

‘Gotcha’ Approach

“Our members are concerned that the department is shifting its focus from compliance assistance back to more of the ‘gotcha’ or aggressive enforcement first approach.”

—Karen Harned, executive director of the National Federation of Independent Business’ small business legal center, on the aggressive approach to workplace safety enforcement being taken by the Obama Administration’s labor secretary, Hilda Solis.