News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker. Parent comment

Re:Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker by bmmayer1 on Tuesday January 31, 2017 @01:40AM (#13528317)
Right, but one of the issues is that a corporate "person" isn't the same as an individual person, and they don't overlap completely. They are only treated as persons under the law with regard to certain rights/obligations (sue and be sued, open a bank account, pay taxes, etc). But a corporation isn't a person for purposes of criminal culpability; i.e. you could never arrest a corporation for murder. Though corporations are just groups of individuals who themselves could absolutely be guilty of crimes.

There's a whole section in the Wikipedia article on corporate personhood that addresses these misconceptions[1].

I guess the real world "corporate guillotine" is for a corporation to be sued/fined out of existence or go bankrupt, all of which can happen due to gross negligence, bad behavior, or criminal behavior (see: Gawker Media, Bear Stearns, etc). But obviously jail is reserved for individuals who commit actual crimes, not corporations who are, after all, merely legal vehicles for pooling resources.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood#Misconcep...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker by occamrazor on Tuesday January 31, 2017 @03:10AM (#13528684)
In some jurisdictions (e.g. France) corporations can be subjected to criminal prosecution. The penalty can include forced dissolution of the enterprise.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker by forgetsusername on Tuesday January 31, 2017 @08:35AM (#13530369)
>Though corporations are just groups of individuals who themselves could absolutely be guilty of crimes.

...or completely innocent of crimes.

I think it's important to remember that when there's talk about beheading corporate executives (and this isn't the first time I've read that on these forums): people are more likely to be innocent than not.

[ Parent | on HN ]