For 150 years or so the United States Supreme Court has been increasing the powers of corporations in our county, giving them free speech rights and slapping the crap out of consumers and workers in many cases. Occasionally the worm turns, but over time corporations get expanded powers and people get the shaft.
With the current court, that's a given. For the conservative world, companies have more rights than people and always deserve the benefit of the doubt. With the Bush appointees it's just getting worse, another reason to back no matter which Democrat wins the nomination for President.
But last week we got to see the court get it's comeuppance in a single, short response from a lawyer for the Alaskan people whose lives were drastically damaged by the incompetence and idiocy of the Exxon corporation.
There is certainly evidence the court will not easily shake its undue solicitude for the problems of corporations. One example came last week, in Exxon’s challenge to a $2.5 billion punitive damages award against it arising out of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who once practiced corporate law, asked, "So what can a corporation do to protect itself against punitive damages awards such as this?" The court has been on a campaign to strike down large awards of punitive damages against corporations, but the lawyer for the oil spill’s victims, Professor Jeffrey Fisher of Stanford Law School, had the answer: "It can hire fit and competent people."
In that one beautiful and simple line we get the answer as to why tort reform and limiting the right to sue is so stupid. If the corporations that keep pushing tort reform weren't consistently committing grievous and idiotic mistakes that caused real and significant harm, they wouldn't get sued.
But many corporations in this country don't give a damn. They just assume they can commit any offense -- like Enron, Exxon or Verizon -- and the courts or the Congress will absolve them of guilt. The million dollar verdict is simply the cost of doing business, since the profits were $100 million.
But when real judgments are handed down not only sweeping away the profits gained from illegal and damaging acts but also adding punitive fines on top, the corporate world screams. They feel they they are owed profits, no matter what crimes were committed, and the most they will ever offer in return is the most simple of recompense to the people they hurt.
Well, if corporations want to have the same rights -- and more -- as breathing American citizens then they have to face the possibility of having their lives destroyed for their mistakes just like a human being does.
How is it we are willing to put an American citizen in jail for 10 years or longer for smoking pot, destroying their ability to make a living or have a career, but we are fearful of doing the same to a corporation like Enron or Exxon that destroyed thousands of lives?
We need to restore sanity to this world, where at the least artificial, government-created "entities" like corporations have fewer rights and more risks than real living, breathing citizens.