The Short Arm of the Law 336
mindbrane writes "CNN takes a look at when companies are too big for the legal system to handle. Quoting: 'Prosecutors said that excluding Pfizer would most likely lead to Pfizer's collapse, with collateral consequences: disrupting the flow of Pfizer products to Medicare and Medicaid recipients, causing the loss of jobs including those of Pfizer employees who were not involved in the fraud, and causing significant losses for Pfizer shareholders. ... So Pfizer and the feds cut a deal. Instead of charging Pfizer with a crime, prosecutors would charge a Pfizer subsidiary, Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. Inc. ... As a result, Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. Inc., the subsidiary, was excluded from Medicare without ever having sold so much as a single pill. And Pfizer was free to sell its products to federally funded health programs.' IBM may have cast the mold for this sort of thing in its 1970s antitrust case, but the recurrence of similar cases speaks to ongoing concerns for legal systems."
Re:Prosecuting corporations for crimes is asinine. (Score:5, Interesting)
That's what I was going to say.
When an individual is convicted of a 'hacking' crime, the punishment is often, 'No access to computers.'
When an male is convicted of rape, there is often a cry for him to be castrated.
I say when an individual is convicted of mis-using his corporation and corporate power that he have it be removed from him, (as well as any profits he might have earned at the time.)
Follow the signature trails, and get the people on both sides. The people responsible for oversight need to be held liable and the people who accepted the order need to be held liable. The further away from the central figure, the less their individual punishment would be. (However, emphasis goes UP, not down. We don't want any sacrificial lambs.)
Instead of a whole corporation paying for the actions of it's management, the management pays, and the punishment for the corporation is simply dealing with a management shift. (Hopefully a more carefully ethical one this time.)
Re:Prosecuting corporations for crimes is asinine. (Score:3, Interesting)
I disagree, because it puts people between getting paid money to feed their children and walking out and getting nothing. Since corporations are "owned" in the sense that they have shareholders, I think that any corporation that commits a crime just gets partiallt or totally claimed by the state. For small infractions, say, take 20% ownership(equally from shareholders), which is a fine of millions/billions depending on the size of the company. For more serious things, the govt should just take complete ownership of the company. Also make it so that the govt has to then auction off the company, and the previous owners cannot buy any shares in that company ever again. This has three major benefits, firstly, the employees just trying to feed their families don't get shafted. secondly, it punishes those ultimately responsible. Thirdly, people know they can lose everything if they invest in dodgy companies.
Why shareholders aren't punished for the actions of a corporation is completely beyond me. They decide who the CEO/CTO is, the majority shareholders decide what the corp does. why not hold them all responsible? and even give them jail time, etc etc for more serious things.
Re:Snow Crash (Score:3, Interesting)
People commit crimes, not companies (Score:3, Interesting)
Should clarify the mind and make directors / VPs realise that they must take responsibility for the organisations they run id they want to keep earning the big bucks.
Re:Prosecuting corporations for crimes is asinine. (Score:3, Interesting)
Not necessarily figuratively.
If a corporation's actions lead to deaths in a jurisdiction that has a death penalty for those actions if committed by a person, then the people within the corporation responsible for those actions should be eligible for that as well.
"I was just following orders" isn't acceptable in a war crimes trial, it shouldn't be here either.
Re:Prosecuting corporations for crimes is asinine. (Score:4, Interesting)
That is called risk, starting a company or having stocks is risk taking business.
You do not have the right to be exempt of risks.
Re:Thomas Jefferson said it best: (Score:2, Interesting)
It's just amazing to me that a female lawyer would choose Thomas "women are subservient" Aquinas over Thomas Jefferson. If the thought processes of Aquinas had continued to remain dominant, she would have never had the chance to become a lawyer.
Re:The other side of the coin to Regulatory Captur (Score:2, Interesting)
SCOTUS has never reached the decision that corporations are "deserving" of human rights. A passing remark included by a court reporter in the case of Santa Clara County vs Southern Railroad is usually the basis for that belief. It is, frankly speaking, one of the most harmful beliefs in modern law.
Re:The other side of the coin to Regulatory Captur (Score:3, Interesting)
Patents didn't keep the US from cashing in Bayer's patent for the Anthrax cure. Or, rather, give them the hint that they will invalidate it due to "national emergency" if they didn't offer the antidote at the US government mandated price.
Why's that impossible with Pfizer?
Re:Thomas Jefferson said it best: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually by keeping the cookie and looking at him kindly while trying to reason with him why it's not ok to take the cookie. What will the 2 year old learn? That he can take the cookie, keep the cookie and that you're a joker that he needn't take serious.
Odd, I think I just realized what's wrong with our economy and our parenting at the same time...
Re:Prosecuting corporations for crimes is asinine. (Score:3, Interesting)
I say when an individual is convicted of mis-using his corporation and corporate power that he have it be removed from him, (as well as any profits he might have earned at the time.)
I say that fines should be measured in percentages rather than in numbers: Speeding ticket? You pay 1% of your wealth; Fraud? You pay 200% of the fraudulent gains; etc.
Re:Prosecuting corporations for crimes is asinine. (Score:3, Interesting)
If my boss tells me to kill a person, and I do, I should go to jail for murder. My boss also goes to jail for murder. Why should it be any different for employees of a corporation?
Re:The other side of the coin to Regulatory Captur (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, what happened to men like John Adams?
"Let justice be done, though the heavens fall."
Re:Thomas Jefferson said it best: (Score:1, Interesting)
I laughed at that. Don't these "conservatives" realize that the separation of church and state is better for the state AND the church? The best way to destroy the religion they so cling to would be to intermingle it with petty politics.
I personally think it has overreached though. People look at this
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion
then conveniently skip
, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof
This means the government can not say one way or the other. Yet it has violated repeatedly the second part. If you want the first part so bad you can not ignore the second. This includes the government and the PEOPLE who work for it. Who speaks for the government worker that is told that they can not have any sort of christian memorabilia in their work place? Also notice it almost ALWAYS christian memorabilia. Would anyone dare say anything if it was memorabilia from any of the other religions? No because we as a society are too busy being politically correct and do not want to 'offend' anyone.
I personally, like as you, do not want them mixed. But I also think it is overreached trying to hard to be politically correct. That is the part I have a problem with. Keep pushing these people and they will lash back. Right now they are semi-accepting of it. But eventually they grow weary of being nit picked to death. When you finally wake up the lion you will not like the results.
Why do I harp on the second part? To prohibit the very thing you seem to dislike is to do the SAME thing as what the other group wants to do. You are de-facto creating a religion of non religion. This very neo-religion wants by its nature to suppress and stamp out religion. To put the religion of atheism above all in the federal government is just as dangerous as putting any other religion in there. I would argue it violates the very principal of separation of church and state. This is the very reason for BOTH parts of that verse. The government does not get involved. That does not mean the people running it suddenly become atheists just to work there (in fact this very thing would violate federal law). It just means they do not make rules abolishing or creating rules that say one way or the other.
To dig into the intent of the rules is of little use. It merely is a distraction from the real elephant in the room. The rules we have in place and written down that we follow.
Culpability (Score:1, Interesting)
When was the last time a company was sentenced to the equivalent of 10 years in prison? to the death penalty?
You're going to need a mighty big needle to kill an entire company :-).
However, you're missing something: culpability. A company has no morals, no ethics, no sense of justice, but those who control it do. Every single time an executive gets away with what the Germans said after the war ("Ich habe es nicht gewusst"/"I didn't know") you put another nail in the coffin of society. IMHO, the rules are simple: if you share in the profits of an organisation as a board member or shareholder, you accept culpability with it. If your organisation audits, then your company will be responsible for failures - all the way to the top, so there's no scapegoating possible.
However, that goes for governments too: if your department was responsible for watching over the finance market and failed, you damn well are PERSONALLY responsible and should be heading for jail. If the law you signed in had at the last moment some totally irrelevant clause added (which apparently happens in the US - a worse form of non-oversight is hardly possible) YOU will face the consequences for the problems (so stop that practice).
If you as a judge allowed injustice to stand and progress, YOU should be looking at jailtime. Not just disbarment so you could go and live of the money you made until you screwed up, no, suffer hardship like the one you caused by putting the letter of the law before their guiding principles.
It's time voters hold companies, government AND the legal system accountable. If someone spied on people without permission, find who authorised it and stop the courts from freeing them on some technicality. If it was a president, last time I looked he's a servant too. If you can impeach a guy for finding the only girl in town who doesn't know how to clean a dress yet left the country with a considerable surplus, then it ought to be possible to put the people in jail who took a country to war on a lie and tried to exclude themselves from due process, leaving behind a black smoking crater of a deficit. Audit records and email gone? Well, hang those whose job it was to watch over that and didn't.
Sure, there is an awful LOT of that to do - but if you don't, things will only get worse. Now the ship is sinking, the rats are busy stealing all the remaining biscuits off the life rafts. Until you expose the rats and DEMAND some honesty and ethics it's not going to change. The hard bit is that it will demand thinking for yourself again, a habit that has been systematically weeded out..
So there. I'll take my medicine now, thanks :-)