Avoiding Corporate Liability

[Joanne98]

by Ralph Nader

Once upon a time early in the 19th century, corporations came into existence by state legislatures approving charters, which were granted for a limited period of time and for limited purposes. These corporations - producing textiles and other products in New England - raised capital in part because their investors had limited liability. That meant they could not lose any more than their investment if things went wrong.

Since corporations were artificial legal entities and not human, these lawmakers feared that without some strong leashes, they could be creating Frankensteins.

Over the following two hundred years, these ever larger corporations and their attorneys have been driving relentlessly, dynamically to erect systems of privileges and immunities that give the corporations themselves limited liability.

Their first big move was to take the chartering authority from the state legislature and place it inside an executive agency where chartering became automatic, shorn of the conditions the lawmakers once imposed.

Once chartering became automatic, perpetual and open-ended, corporate lawyers moved to have the courts - not the legislatures - turn corporations into "persons" for purposes of constitutional rights.

Their big breakthrough came with the Santa Clara case in 1886 when the U.S. Supreme Court allowed its summary headnotes to declare that the railroad in the case was a "person" for purposes of the 14th amendment. Through elaborations in later Supreme Court decisions, that meant that companies like Aetna, General Electric, Exxon and Lockheed had most of the same constitutional rights as real people like you.

Soon it was off to the races and the promised land of no-fault corporate behavior. Early in the 20th century, companies erected "no-fault" workers compensation schemes limiting damages for the horrors of worker injuries and workplace diseases in those mines, factories, and foundries.

Continued>>>
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/28

[TransitJohn]

1. K&R

Save the USA...end corporate personhood now.

[FiveGoodMen]

3. Absolutely!

What an insane idea, to treat a legal entity like a live person.

[izzybeans]

2. k and r

[Hawkowl]

4. THE fundamental problem

None of our economic problems will be solved until we require accountability of corporate officers by destroying the concept of the corporation as a legal person. Incorporation is simply a license to lie, cheat, steal and murder as it stands now.

[leftofthedial]

5. corporations are the out-of-control killer cells

of the cancer of capitalism.

[tio]

6. weee

The state is a corporation and you are its legal property ...What You Believe ... "It's an Illusion"

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22481.htm

[fasttense]

7. So what is the final goal of corporations?

"Their final conquest is far along-the control of government which is then turned against its own people."

Well, we are seeing that right now. Despite the control of our information mediums, survey after survey (if done fairly) shows that American citizens want out of the bush wars, universal health-care, the right to organize, jobs with fair wages, affordable college education, accountability for all politicians and their crimes and regulation of corporations/banks/Wall Street/insurance firms. Yet at every turn, these clear desires of the American people are ignored, minimized, manipulated and overruled. Corporations have already reached their final conquest as described by Nader.

So, what is the next step? Slavery?