On 14/08/2023 16:17, Jan Whitaker wrote: > In the US (not sure about Australia), corporations earned status as a > "person". So they can be sued. "Free speech" has its limits. I am not a > lawyer. I'm not a lawyer either, though it was a close thing.
A Corporation in an abstract sense has no will, and no moral or ethical sense, and therefore cannot be culpable. But the Directors do have a will and an ethical or moral sense, at least for legal purposes (:-). And so the legal fiction that a Corporation should be treated as a person is justified on the ground that it protects the Directors from prosecution unless & until individuals are shown to be responsible in the event of some malfeasance. I'd guess it's the same in the US. Having said that, I once floated the idea of a skiing trip around a social club to which I belonged; in fact I was the Secretary at the time and hence a "Director". Fortunately I thought to 'phone the club's insurance broker about liability if someone had a serious or even fatal accident. His response soon put an end to it: the injured party's insurer would make a claim on the club, but they knew small organisations like that had very few assets so they would join the Directors in the action as a matter of course. And that meant we might all have to sell up to fund a claim. It's also worth saying that disclaimers apparently have very little force. But as I remarked at the outset of this epistle, I'm not a lawyer either!! _ David Lochrin_ _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] https://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
