Quote :

"As such, as long as Monsanto keeps paying above and beyond to put right all the harm it does, it should get to keep causing harm."

So by that logic, as long as I keep serving my time in prison for committing rapes and murders, I should get to keep committing rapes and murders.

9/9/2009 12:51:54 PM

Obviously, the penalties should go higher for successive offenses, just like with regular ole criminals.

9/9/2009 12:53:30 PM

So in Communist and Socialist countries there are no big companies that do bad things to make a buck?

Like use slave labor to make bricks or something?

9/9/2009 1:04:57 PM

Quote :

"Because setting fire to crops is different than putting farmers out of business, poisoning water supplies, and just generally killing people."

The people in this thread need to make up their mind what they are talking about. You just finished saying that you are arguing that Monsanto should face civil lawsuits for its actions, which the OP clearly states it has, so no argument is needed, your goal is already reality. But then, in an effort be over the top, you bring up shit that is not tort related, as I'm pretty sure "lawsuits" are not the proper response to "killing people", but criminal charges.

Quote :

"So by that logic, as long as I keep serving my time in prison for committing rapes and murders, I should get to keep committing rapes and murders."

Yes, as long as your execution is carried out successfully, you are free to proceed as you wish after that. This makes a bad metaphor, because your first round of punishment is usually your last, so repeat offenders are rare.

A better metaphor would be someone that keeps selling marijuana even though he gets arrested every time. The charge is the charge, if the fine for selling marijuana is six months in prison, then that should be the fine whether it is your first offense or the sixteenth. Three strikes laws suck, in my opinion.

9/9/2009 1:12:01 PM

Quote :

"So in Communist and Socialist countries there are no big companies that do bad things to make a buck? Like use slave labor to make bricks or something?"

This is a tired strawman. Maybe there are some folks here that are for outright socialism/communism. As best I can tell, Kris left a long time ago. Everyone else is simply arguing against the weaknesses in capitalism, not for the virtues of socialism.

9/9/2009 1:22:07 PM

Wait, so your purpose is to say that no system occupied by imperfect people is perfect? It sounded to me like you were arguing we need to grant Republican appointed bureaucrats the right to wreck companies they don't like, on the grounds that maybe someone somewhere would use this power to punish Monsanto for crimes it was either already punished for or did not commit. What else am I supposed to get out of the sentence "Which is exactly why we need oversight."? Oversight by whom and to what end?

[Edited on September 9, 2009 at 1:49 PM. Reason : .,.]

9/9/2009 1:48:53 PM

Quote :

"It sounded to me like you were arguing we need to grant Republican appointed bureaucrats the right to wreck companies they don't like,"

rofl, I have nothing to reply to this bit of hilarity

Quote :

"What else am I supposed to get out of the sentence "Which is exactly why we need oversight."? Oversight by whom and to what end?"

Don't be a boob. Or did you forget what deregulation and lax oversight did in the last decade?

9/9/2009 2:36:03 PM

Quote :

"We ALREADY have this. Did you not see how many billions the cigarette makers had to pay out? It always has been and always will be a game of percentages (think, safety recalls). Just how much money can you make before getting caught, and just how much trouble can you kick down the road. Clearly, massive fines have no effect as the losses get socialized on unsuspecting shareholders."

And yet, amazingly, cigarette makers are still making cigarettes. So what exactly did the massive fines they pay out discourage them from doing, other than things they quit doing decades ago? The fact of the matter is, if the penalty for murder is a night in jail, chances are the threshold stopping many folks from casual murder (those unconstrained by other ethical considerations, at least) will drop considerably. Therefore, if the penalties are small enough to be swallowed, infrequent enough not to interrupt normal business, and delayed enough that they occur long after the original event in question, how exactly do they act as a deterrent?

The point being, for penalties to have a deterrent effect, they need to be both timely and severe enough to make an impact upon decision-making to the point where harmful actions carry enough of a consequence to be unprofitable.

Your point about "socializing losses to shareholders" is a red herring. Investors invest in a company that is profitable, and don't for one that is not. If penalties for egregiously harmful acts don't impair profitability, investors will continue to invest. If they do impair profitability, they won't. It's quite simple: investors want to make money, and take their money to firms who will do that.

Quote :

"No, but excellent rebuttal!"

I return to you only what you choose to hand out.

9/9/2009 2:47:24 PM

Quote :

" Your point about "socializing losses to shareholders" is a red herring. Investors invest in a company that is profitable, and don't for one that is not. If penalties for egregiously harmful acts don't impair profitability, investors will continue to invest. If they do impair profitability, they won't. It's quite simple: investors want to make money, and take their money to firms who will do that."

You sound like a guy that doesn't know much about investing at all.

9/9/2009 2:51:30 PM

Quote :

"A felony is committed by anyone that carried out the crime and anyone that ordered the crime. There is no justification defense of "they told me to" or "that's my job" allowed in criminal court. That it is allowed in civil court is both true and irrelevant."

I didn't make the claim that the proximate agent (the immediate person responsible) could not be charged (in fact, I said the opposite, if you read what I originally wrote). However, establishing culpability of the actual management of a corporation is quite difficult, not the least of which because of the fact that the corporation itself enjoys legal privileges of "personhood." Which, contrary to your claims otherwise, is very real, and very much so a part of the U.S. legal system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person

Furthermore, the law does treat corporations as a "legal person" for the purposes of crimes committed by said entity:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_crime

Therefore, the distinction becomes entirely relevant as to the culpability of senior management in a crime and their distinction from the corporate entity as a whole.

An example - the Exxon Valdez spill. How much culpability did senior management have over the actions of an agent of the company who was willfully and grossly negligent? What responsibilities did they have over their employee?

Or, take a more malicious act - an actual act of violence carried out by agents of a company. Again, how does one establish culpability, when it is the company doing it? I never once claimed it was impossible, only that current law makes it difficult.

As an aside, interestingly enough the U.K. has at least debated the very notion of how to charge "corporate manslaughter" - that is, a crime committed by a corporation resulting in the death of one or more individuals:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_manslaughter_(England_and_Wales)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Manslaughter_and_Corporate_Homicide_Act_2007

9/9/2009 3:02:37 PM

Quote :

"You sound like a guy that doesn't know much about investing at all."

And you sound like someone who doesn't know much about anything at all, but likes to huff and puff about how much smarter he is than everybody else rather than simply demonstrate his point. Such as above, and pretty much every other one of your posts in this forum.

No one thinks you're special.

9/9/2009 3:04:26 PM

Quote :

"Yes, as long as your execution is carried out successfully, you are free to proceed as you wish after that. This makes a bad metaphor, because your first round of punishment is usually your last, so repeat offenders are rare. A better metaphor would be someone that keeps selling marijuana even though he gets arrested every time. The charge is the charge, if the fine for selling marijuana is six months in prison, then that should be the fine whether it is your first offense or the sixteenth. Three strikes laws suck, in my opinion."

The examples I used were extreme, I admit. But do you understand exactly what it is that you're advocating? By your line of thinking, a company can continue to dump ton and ton of toxic waste into the environment, so long as they can continue to afford paying the fines and settlements. How about we nip all of the health and environmental damage in the bud and make them not fucking do it in the first place?

9/9/2009 3:39:04 PM

Quote :

"Silly question... what is wrong with that? If the only way Monsanto knows how to make money tends to harm others' property, then as long as Monsanto loses in court and pays above and beyond the damage it inflicts upon its neighbors, and then still manages to produce enough value for its customers to exceed the court costs, then I suggest that Monsanto is a good for society. It is serving its customers, compensating any victims property damage, employing lots of lawyers, and still producing enough surplus for shareholders, so what is the problem? It sounds to me like a long list of 'wins'."

I think that the key issue is that the people hurt by Monsanto's activities are not fairly compensated in court. That's a very fair statement if you've watched a documentary or heard about what Monsanto is doing. Farmers are literally afraid of saying something bad about the company because of things like hamburger laws.

So if the courts can't effectively dish out enough (or more) retribution to make up for the evils a company does (which it can't), then we can analyze what kind of wealth movements are happening. Basically the victims of Monsanto's actions are being stolen from to subsidize returns. Don't forget to include Mother Nature in that list of victims, as the number of varieties of crops plummets directly due to actions of Monsanto (which it has), we accept more sterile and brittle eco systems that our crops are held up on. Where was the court case where Monsanto's resources were allocated to environmental philanthropy in great enough proportion to preserve as much or more of nature as what they destroyed? It's not happening.

And don't forget to mention that the stock market is a secondary market, meaning that no one, i repeat, no one is investing in the company of Monsanto. Why? Because billions have already been invested in the company. The only thing that's happening is that those existing shares are being traded around. Furthermore, whenever some legal framework changes in favor or not in favor to Monsanto, the stock price instantly adjusts. So we're only talking about preserving returns or making value for present shareholders... at the exact time of whatever change we're talking about. That's why ultimately, we're only really balancing the interests of the capital markets here. In other words, we're talking about one drop in the bucket for all the investors out there, who are diversified anyway.

I really don't think any argument that Monsanto is a "net good" is going to hold up. The only thing we may argue in this case is that they have the right to continue operating as they are - which they do. If you want to apply utilitarian ethics, we are all net less happy due to the existence of Monsanto. However, we must accept this evil in order to preserve our way of life which is maintained by allowing the thousands of other public companies to operate in the same way.

9/9/2009 4:22:49 PM

Quote :

"And you sound like someone who doesn't know much about anything at all, but likes to huff and puff about how much smarter he is than everybody else rather than simply demonstrate his point. Such as above, and pretty much every other one of your posts in this forum. No one thinks you're special."

Oh god, the irony is that you really do think you are.

Let's go back to your comment

Quote :

"Your point about "socializing losses to shareholders" is a red herring. Investors invest in a company that is profitable, and don't for one that is not."

There are so many examples of people investing in companies that soon go bankrupt that it is mind boggling. The point that flew over your head was, in all too many instances, investors (especially the retail variety) are the last to know when management has been misdealing.

Quote :

"If penalties for egregiously harmful acts don't impair profitability, investors will continue to invest. If they do impair profitability, they won't."

Holy shit, did you think of that yourself? You could have saved some typing by saying this

Quote :

"If penalties for egregiously harmfulacts don't impair profitability, investors will continue to invest. If they do impair profitability, they won't."

Quote :

"And yet, amazingly, cigarette makers are still making cigarettes. So what exactly did the massive fines they pay out discourage them from doing, other than things they quit doing decades ago?"

I'd say the decrease in the rate of smoking had a HUGE effect on cig makers. Altria was up 200% from 78-88. Up 500% from 88-98. It's only up 100% in the last 10 years. This is on a high margin product. I'd say massive fines put a huge halt on the criminal aspects of how Altria was behaving.

Quote :

"Therefore, if the penalties are small enough to be swallowed, infrequent enough not to interrupt normal business, and delayed enough that they occur long after the original event in question, how exactly do they act as a deterrent?"

In lieu of high penalties, then like I already said, oversight is needed. Look no further than the laws regarding pool drains. Apparently, the Edwards case wasn't high profile enough to have any real effect nationally, so laws have been written to fix this situation.

Quote :

"The point being, for penalties to have a deterrent effect, they need to be both timely and severe enough to make an impact upon decision-making to the point where harmful actions carry enough of a consequence to be unprofitable."

Severe, sure. But I don't agree they need to be timely. Again, see the cig makers for examples.

9/9/2009 5:04:23 PM

Quote :

"There are so many examples of people investing in companies that soon go bankrupt that it is mind boggling. The point that flew over your head was, in all too many instances, investors (especially the retail variety) are the last to know when management has been misdealing."

I'm at a loss as to what you're actually trying to say here. People invest in companies about to go bankrupt or people buy shares in companies about to go bankrupt.

9/9/2009 5:11:58 PM

Buying a share is investing in a company.

9/9/2009 5:19:54 PM

some people might make a distinction between investing and buying a share. It's semantics, but still.

9/9/2009 5:25:15 PM

Quote :

"There are so many examples of people investing in companies that soon go bankrupt that it is mind boggling. The point that flew over your head was, in all too many instances, investors (especially the retail variety) are the last to know when management has been misdealing."

Exactly what is your point? Do you dispute the idea that investor behavior is at the very least motivated chiefly by profit-seeking? The fact that information is imperfect doesn't rebut this point, or any point I've made. All it does is contest the efficiency of the average investor. It doesn't change the fundamental fact that investors seek to maximize returns, if inefficiently.

Quote :

"Holy shit, did you think of that yourself? You could have saved some typing by saying this"

The point may have escaped you, but the issue is that the act itself may be profitable, but the issue is whether the penalties exceed the gains of this act. Should the gains exceed the penalty, it makes rational economic sense to keep committing crimes. Therefore, the penalty must be such that it actually makes it not profitable to commit crimes.

Quote :

"I'd say the decrease in the rate of smoking had a HUGE effect on cig makers. Altria was up 200% from 78-88. Up 500% from 88-98. It's only up 100% in the last 10 years. This is on a high margin product. I'd say massive fines put a huge halt on the criminal aspects of how Altria was behaving."

You're making a different argument, here. The question was whether large lawsuits over practices carried out decades ago have impaired cigarette makers from their primary business, and the answer is, "not really." The evidence you point to otherwise is of a larger social trend - people not smoking is more a product of a greater awareness of the hazards of smoking than anything tobacco companies have done recently.

Quote :

"In lieu of high penalties, then like I already said, oversight is needed. Look no further than the laws regarding pool drains. Apparently, the Edwards case wasn't high profile enough to have any real effect nationally, so laws have been written to fix this situation."

Here's the thing - I'm guessing the Edwards case had a monumental impact upon that particular manufacturer. However, a question arises - just how common are these incidents? (Genuine question). Growing up, I never knew anyone who experienced such, or knew anyone who knew anyone about this, or even heard that this was a danger. So, despite the post-hoc rationalization that this regulation is necessary, I have to first ask just how widespread the problem really was. (Note that I am saying widespread, not significant. Clearly the consequences in this case were dire - but how frequent were they?)

Quote :

"But I don't agree they need to be timely. Again, see the cig makers for examples."

Timeliness has everything to do with escaping the time-value problem. If a company's management decides to do something illegal/immoral that is profitable now but either won't be detected or will be strung up in litigation for decades, it makes economic sense for them to do something wrong; namely because their timeframe (i.e., when they'd actually be held to account) does not coincide with the long-term timeframe of the company itself. Timelinesses is clearly an issue in deterrence.

9/9/2009 5:26:58 PM

Quote :

"By your line of thinking, a company can continue to dump ton and ton of toxic waste into the environment, so long as they can continue to afford paying the fines and settlements. How about we nip all of the health and environmental damage in the bud and make them not fucking do it in the first place?"

Presumably the fines and litigation are specifically designed to "make them not fucking do it". Therefore it stands to reason that if they are still doing it, regardless of the law, the penalties are not accurately reflecting the level of harm being done, or conversely, that the level of harm really isn't that great in the long run.

9/9/2009 6:49:21 PM

Quote :

"Buying a share is investing in a company."

If the intent was to say that a mind boggling number of people buy shares in a company right before it goes bankrupt, then that's a meaningless statement. There is a mind boggling number of "investing" in companies that goes on every day, and is far greater than what the company itself actually spends investing.

This is obvious, but I'll say it anyway, if one individual invests in a company and another sells the same amount of their holding, then there is no net investment. Now, you could possibly make a claim such as "the volume of trading for a company on the verge of bankruptcy goes up". I may be tempted to agree with you on that account, but the question of "so what?" still remains unanswered.

Perhaps you would like to argue that there is a heavy amount of insider selling when a company nears bankruptcy. Maybe you would also like to argue that this happens while the price is still high. Then, if you did that, you would have formed a complete and meaningful argument.

9/9/2009 7:44:59 PM

Quote :

"And yet, amazingly, cigarette makers are still making cigarettes."

And parachute makers are stilling making parachutes. In my opinion, someone choosing to smoke a cigarette is no different from someone that chooses to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. They are both crazy, and at the same time have the right to be crazy. As such, IF these stupid lawsuits managed to bankrupt the cigarette makers I would consider that a miscarriage of justice, just as surely as if they managed to sue the parachute makers out of business whenever someone died using that product.

Quote :

"However, establishing culpability of the actual management of a corporation is quite difficult, not the least of which because of the fact that the corporation itself enjoys legal privileges of "personhood.""

How? I don't see how the corporation being a person could possibly affect the investigation. "Sir, when you were ordered to kill this hobo, who gave the order? The CEO? I knew it! Arrest the CEO for first-degree murder!" The only reference I found in any of your links suggesting that personhood mattered to an investigation was in reference to application of bill of rights protections. Which is absurd, even if the corporation was not considered a person, the people that own it or work there certainly are, and attempting to search a place of business without a warrant is wrong, whether it is my own private store front or a corporate headquarters.

As for corporate manslaughter, it sounds to me like the police want to be let off the hook for not performing a real investigation. It is so much easier to convict something imaginary of manslaughter than it is to try and figure out who made the decision which caused the deaths. But I think that would be horrible: someone somewhere consciously decided to commit manslaughter and yet, is going to go unpunished because the government has decided it would be more expedient to charge an imaginary creature with the crime.

Well, that would be a far more dangerous society. It would mean that managers and employees are free to gamble with their customers lives, safe in the knowledge that the company and its owners will take the blame when the dying starts. The only punishment for these criminals will be getting fired, as the shareholders lose everything. As your own link says: "Again it is argued, company fines ultimately punish shareholders, customers and employees in general, rather than culpable managers." To put it back the way I originally phrased it, charging an individual with manslaughter punishes the guilty and deters future criminals. Charging a corporation with manslaughter punishes innocent employees and shareholders which had no way of knowing a crime was being committed.

umbrellaman, I refer you to 1337 b4k4's post.

[Edited on September 10, 2009 at 12:56 AM. Reason : .,.]

9/10/2009 12:49:44 AM

I'm not reading all of this writing and shit but whats the deal with cigarettes?

9/10/2009 1:33:29 AM

Quote :

"And parachute makers are stilling making parachutes. In my opinion, someone choosing to smoke a cigarette is no different from someone that chooses to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. They are both crazy, and at the same time have the right to be crazy."

lol......... what?

Cigarettes: Smoke enough of these and you'll get cancer!

Parachutes: Don't use these and you'll die 100% of the time when jumping out of an airplane!

SAME. DIFFERENCE.

9/10/2009 8:31:25 AM

Quote :

"And parachute makers are stilling making parachutes. In my opinion, someone choosing to smoke a cigarette is no different from someone that chooses to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. They are both crazy, and at the same time have the right to be crazy. As such, IF these stupid lawsuits managed to bankrupt the cigarette makers I would consider that a miscarriage of justice, just as surely as if they managed to sue the parachute makers out of business whenever someone died using that product."

You are clearly missing the point of this example.

Quote :

"How? I don't see how the corporation being a person could possibly affect the investigation. "Sir, when you were ordered to kill this hobo, who gave the order? The CEO? I knew it! Arrest the CEO for first-degree murder!" The only reference I found in any of your links suggesting that personhood mattered to an investigation was in reference to application of bill of rights protections. Which is absurd, even if the corporation was not considered a person, the people that own it or work there certainly are, and attempting to search a place of business without a warrant is wrong, whether it is my own private store front or a corporate headquarters."

Because, despite your rather naive objection, it adds a significant layer to the process of actual discovery. Now, not only does one have to follow the ordinary process of discovery toward an individual responsible for conspiracy, there are the the legal issues in place over the corporation as well. Essentially one hand washing the other. A significant overlap exists between the individuals involved and the corporate entity itself. Again, for emphasis: this does not make investigation impossible. It simply makes it far more difficult.

As for corporate manslaughter, it sounds to me like the police want to be let off the hook for not performing a real investigation. It is so much easier to convict something imaginary of manslaughter than it is to try and figure out who made the decision which caused the deaths. But I think that would be horrible: someone somewhere consciously decided to commit manslaughter and yet, is going to go unpunished because the government has decided it would be more expedient to charge an imaginary creature with the crime.

Quote :

"Well, that would be a far more dangerous society. It would mean that managers and employees are free to gamble with their customers lives, safe in the knowledge that the company and its owners will take the blame when the dying starts. The only punishment for these criminals will be getting fired, as the shareholders lose everything."

You act as if this already doesn't happen. Calculated negligence happens all the time. How many people go to prison for that? Furthermore, you've chosen yet again to ignore my point that it is more difficult - not impossible to make the charge. Further upon that, neither one of these excludes charging the individual responsible for directly committing the act in question.

Given that I've already stated all of these, I am left to conclude that you are simply being intentionally obtuse for the sake of making an argument.

Quote :

"To put it back the way I originally phrased it, charging an individual with manslaughter punishes the guilty and deters future criminals. Charging a corporation with manslaughter punishes innocent employees and shareholders which had no way of knowing a crime was being committed."

Incompetent management "punishes" shareholders and employees as well. Yet I somehow doubt - and rationally so - that you would complain about innocent people being "punished" by this.

9/10/2009 9:28:41 AM

Dog, so you see no similarly between jumping out of a perfectly good airplane and smoking?

Quote :

"Calculated negligence happens all the time. How many people go to prison for that? Furthermore, you've chosen yet again to ignore my point that it is more difficult - not impossible to make the charge. Further upon that, neither one of these excludes charging the individual responsible for directly committing the act in question. Given that I've already stated all of these, I am left to conclude that you are simply being intentionally obtuse for the sake of making an argument."

I am not being obtuse on purpose, I simply lack the imagination to connect your dots. It may sound silly, but could you put it in terms of a Law&Order episode? You keep restating your case in generalities, that it is more difficult. How is it more difficult? Could you make up a case or pick an historical example where because they worked for a sole proprietorship made it easier to arrest the real culprit, some executive or employee that would otherwise have gotten away had they worked for a corporation with imaginary personhood?

And because manslaughter happens all the time, allowing the police to catch headlines by charging the company when they should be hunting down the real individuals in that company responsible would let more guilty people go, not less. I guarantee at some point in the future they will charge the company and no one else. Inflicting punishment upon the innocent, I guess in hopes that the innocent shareholders will find a way to punish to real criminals for them.

That said, I suspect there is also a difference of opinion here. I believe shareholders are innocent and punishing them is a miscarriage of justice. You believe they should have been keeping a closer eye on the shop and therefore are party to the conspiracy and deserve punishment. This is a difference of opinion and we will never agree.

Quote :

"Incompetent management "punishes" shareholders and employees as well. Yet I somehow doubt - and rationally so - that you would complain about innocent people being "punished" by this."

Yes, but we have no control over that. All we have control over is whether the state purposefully punishes the company further than the marketplace was going to.

[Edited on September 10, 2009 at 11:22 AM. Reason : .,.]

9/10/2009 11:10:42 AM

Quote :

"I am not being obtuse on purpose, I simply lack the imagination to connect your dots. It may sound silly, but could you put it in terms of a Law&Order episode? You keep restating your case in generalities, that it is more difficult. How is it more difficult? Could you make up a case or pick an historical example where because they worked for a sole proprietorship made it easier to arrest the real culprit, some executive or employee that would otherwise have gotten away had they worked for a corporation with imaginary personhood?"

I'm going to stop here and confess the fact that an actual lawyer, rather than someone with a familiarity with law, would likely do a much better job on this one than I. Anything I give you will likely be flawed in a dozen different ways and inadequate to demonstrate the purpose of this.

What I can say is this - let's take the case where a crime is "conspired" by the management of a corporation. These people wear two hats - their corporate hat, discharging their duties as agents of the shareholders, and their personal hat, i.e., their normal day-to-day selves as citizens. Given that a corporation is a "legal person", and these people are acting in the capacity of that entity, their dealings are covered under the legal protections of that entity. However, if you're trying to charge the person with the crime, committed while discharging their duties as an officer of the corporation, you have a second layer - i.e., their role as a citizen.

So let's say Person X is a senior manager at a company and has evidence outlining their nefarious plot to kill dissidents or agents of my competitor or whatnot in their personal home (say, on their personal computer) and in records held by the company. The documents pertain to actions carried out in their capacity as an officer of the company. Yet as far as the law is concerned, these are two separate entities - the corporation's papers, and the individual's.

(Obviously, in practice it is manifestly more complex than this - however, again, I am not an expert.)

On the other hand, a sole proprietorship is an extension of the individual's property. Legally the two are one entity.

Moving back to the civil area, which I understand a bit better - a corporation's assets are blocked off between the corporation and the individual - limited liability. If I own an incorporated business and are liable for damages, they can't go after my personal property - they're two separate legal entities. (In this case, this generally works out to be a good thing).

Quote :

"And because manslaughter happens all the time, allowing the police to catch headlines by charging the company when they should be hunting down the real individuals in that company responsible would let more guilty people go, not less. I guarantee at some point in the future they will charge the company and no one else. Inflicting punishment upon the innocent, I guess in hopes that the innocent shareholders will find a way to punish to real criminals for them."

This remains to be demonstrated. Regardless, if I hire someone who through my lack of oversight ends up killing someone, am I utterly devoid of culpability? I think not.

Quote :

"That said, I suspect there is also a difference of opinion here. I believe shareholders are innocent and punishing them is a miscarriage of justice. You believe they should have been keeping a closer eye on the shop and therefore are party to the conspiracy and deserve punishment. This is a difference of opinion and we will never agree."

If a company performs a tortable act, the company is fined. This punishes the shareholders. Is this a miscarriage of justice?

Again, part of investing is supposed to be (in theory) knowing what you are investing in. If the company is poorly run, you lose your investment. If the company commits actions which land it in legal liability, you lose your investment. It's no different than if you invest in a partnership and the partner commits a liable act which causes them to lose your investment. The only difference is that your house isn't also on the line in this case.

9/10/2009 12:05:45 PM

So, to continue made up examples, we have two businesses. One is wholly owned by me, a sole-proprietorship, and another is owned by you a shareholder in a corporation. We both employ managers which decided to kill a customer. Evidence of this crime exists on our respective computer systems, mine in the back of my store and yours in your corporate headquarters. In both instances the government will need to get a warrant to search both our offices, which will require all the following evidence: that the manager in question likely committed a crime, that we employed them and gave them access to our computer systems, and that evidence is likely to exist there. Again, it seems like the police will be hamstrung by the same constitutional restrictions in either case.

Now, if we changed the law and corporations were not persons, then you are right, it would be easier. The police could search your corporate offices without a warrant, as your corporation would have no expectation of privacy. Meanwhile, me and my sole proprietorship would, as it is my private business property and I do have an expectation.

Therefore, it seems to me like you are not trying to level the legal playing field, you want to make it uneven, depriving shareholders of their collective expectation of privacy.

Quote :

"a corporation's assets are blocked off between the corporation and the individual - limited liability"

That separation is both artificial (free liability insurance from the legislature) and unnecessary and I would prefer it did not exist, but that is another discussion.

Quote :

"If a company performs a tortable act, the company is fined. This punishes the shareholders. Is this a miscarriage of justice?"

Depends on the country. In many other countries (such as France if my memory serves me) you cannot sue a corporation for anything but breech of contract. As such, in those countries all tort actions take place against individuals, either the employees or executives that ordered and carried out the tortable act. I feel this is a far more effective deterrent against bad behavior, as those making the decision face the financial punishment, with the drawback that those harmed often do not get compensated for all they are out.

9/10/2009 1:55:31 PM

Quote :

"Now, if we changed the law and corporations were not persons, then you are right, it would be easier. The police could search your corporate offices without a warrant, as your corporation would have no expectation of privacy. Meanwhile, me and my sole proprietorship would, as it is my private business property and I do have an expectation. Therefore, it seems to me like you are not trying to level the legal playing field, you want to make it uneven, depriving shareholders of their collective expectation of privacy."

Again, this is the problem with the legal fiction of a corporation as a "person." We assign legal rights to an legal fiction or we take them away. Or, like asset forfeiture, we make a legal claim against a non-person.

Once again speaking as a non-lawyer, it would seem altogether more sensible if there was a direct chain of custody to a person or persons. Who owns, say, company's computers on which a warrant is served? The shareholders, or the person who uses it? Speculating for a moment, it seems like searching an individual's files qualifies as "persons and papers." Say for a moment we treat the computer like an extension of the individual whose files are at issue (i.e., the person of interest). We serve the warrant on the individual and search their computer. The issue becomes not a mythical "collective expectation of privacy" but due process for the individual in question.

Backing it up for a moment, and again, how does our sole proprietorship scenario change when it's a joint partnership, and one partner is a criminal suspect on the partnership's computers? It seems like the warrant is still served on the individual in question, and their computers are searched, per the terms of the warrant. The goal here is not to disadvantage or advantage one legal structure over another - it's to normalize them.

Quote :

"Depends on the country. In many other countries (such as France if my memory serves me) you cannot sue a corporation for anything but breech of contract. As such, in those countries all tort actions take place against individuals, either the employees or executives that ordered and carried out the tortable act. I feel this is a far more effective deterrent against bad behavior, as those making the decision face the financial punishment, with the drawback that those harmed often do not get compensated for all they are out."

Perhaps you are right that it is more effective on the individual level. Whether this translates to something which is collectively more effective at deterring bad behavior is an unknown - although it would be very interesting to see some kind of comparative study.

What would concern me about this however is the ability to make redress - it seems like in this case, it can easily come about where an individual is unable to seek full restitution.

9/10/2009 2:07:09 PM

bttt

5/23/2016 9:27:15 PM

just because gmo aren't harmful to human health, doesn't mean monsanto is in the clear

5/23/2016 9:30:04 PM

More like Bayer

5/24/2016 9:36:25 AM