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Thread: When a Publicly Traded Corporation is Convicted Of Manslaughter

  1. #1

    Default When a Publicly Traded Corporation is Convicted Of Manslaughter

    Nobody goes to jail.

    PG&E Pleads Guilty to 84 Counts of Manslaughter


    No executives will be charged, so no one will be imprisoned. PG&E instead will pay a maximum fine of $3.5 million in addition to $500,000 to cover the county’s costs of the criminal investigation.
    Equal protection my ass.
    Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
    If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?

  2. #2
    Individuals inside the corporation made individual decisions that led to the deaths of 84 people. The people that decided to pay investors rather than use the money to safeguard citizens and customers did so because they themselves profited (promotions, pay raises, bonuses) from tricking investors into believing their investment was more lucrative than it actually was. These individuals should be punished for the crime of manslaughter. Sure, some got fired but they will just go on to pull the same shenanigans at another corporation. Just look at the people fired over the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal. Punishing the corporation punishes customers/rate payers instead of punishing the individuals who, for their own personal gain, made the decisions that killed 84 innocent citizens. And that number 84 only counts the citizens directly killed. No one has accounted for the number of premature deaths due to the individual decisions made by individual people.

    The equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment should not apply the same to corporations as it does actual individual citizens. All that does is shield decision makers inside of corporations from personal responsibility for their personal decisions.
    Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
    If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?

  3. #3
    Good luck finding specific individuals who you can prove guilty of manslaughter or even merely criminally negligent homicide beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury. You're NEVER going to be able to stretch criminal law far enough to get guilty verdicts like that out of skewed budget priorities.
    Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy View Post
    Good luck finding specific individuals who you can prove guilty of manslaughter or even merely criminally negligent homicide beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury. You're NEVER going to be able to stretch criminal law far enough to get guilty verdicts like that out of skewed budget priorities.
    They already found them. They got fired. Now they need to be dragged through the courts so if nothing else they have a more difficult time finding similar employment. Hell, they're probably interviewing with corporations like Transocean right this minute.
    Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
    If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Being View Post
    They already found them. They got fired.
    And is the bar for being fired higher or lower than getting an unanimous guilty vote out of a jury when the criminal statutes don't really stretch that way in the first place?
    Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Being View Post
    The equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment should not apply the same to corporations as it does actual individual citizens. All that does is shield decision makers inside of corporations from personal responsibility for their personal decisions.
    Like it did for Tobacco, Oil, and Pharmaceutical magnates (who retired with Golden Parachutes) after they literally poisoned people for profit....and got millions of shareholders/investors to jump on the band wagon? I don't know who's to blame but the system is borked and needs a reset.

    It should be a scandal when the nation's largest utility company admits to causing public harm and gets away with it. If their shareholders would divest (including the state of CA), and put people above profits, we might get somewhere.

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