Citizens United gave them the constitutional right of free speech granted to citizens. The problem is that we let the corporations have it both ways. There are no easy answers but if I am a corporation of 1 person and commit manslaughter do you think it would be handled the same as Uber?
That's an edge case. I would say no, because 1 person companies are not treated the same.
Generally to get this sort of treatment it needs to be an employee that fucks up (meaning not the owner) and the company needs to guarantee it'll take civil responsibility (meaning pay up damages).
Look, there are 2 forces at work here in what we, as humans, seem to want:
People, when working as employees, seem to really protest the idea of being held responsible for anything at all. This has lead to laws that state that employees are almost never responsible for their actions during work time (NOT legal advice, but generally speaking: if you aren't actively sabotaging your employer and it isn't a crime, your employer is responsible. Even if you are extremely negligent)
(Large) corporations tend to be a lot easier to extract money from, and a lot more likely to play fair (ie. actually pay what they're convicted to pay) compared to humans. So even if an employee commits a crime during work hours, the employer takes "civil responsibility" (that's the part of the law where the principle "money (amount to be determined) can take the place of ANY legal conviction"). And criminal responsibility ? Frankly, usually, nobody cares, and employers are generally happy to just fire whoever it was on the spot.
And yes, this is generally true everywhere in the justice system. If the court can trust that you will do whatever it deems necessary, you will get a lot more flexibility out of them. That doesn't mean you can just do anything (American courts especially have historically shown that there are circumstances where they will bankrupt a company if the facts are bad enough, to the point that it's a bit of joke)
Given the above, of course it wouldn't be reasonable to extract heavy punishments against corporations when employees drive a truck through a kindergarten because they fell asleep at the wheel.
This was a woman that was watching Hulu on her cell phone behind the wheel of a car who, we can be pretty sure, was very clearly told to be at any point ready to take over the driving. And, I mean, we've all seen the video of her during that accident ... WTF. I am wondering why you would demand the company be punished ?
This is then further made problematic because actual punishments on companies tend to cause large job losses, large tax base losses, and may cause other companies to leave, further exacerbating the problem. So there's political reasons as well to not go too far.
> In other words, either that woman watching hulu behind the wheel is responsible, or perhaps some other employee, but a person is.
Right. If a group of people came together with a scheme that caused car accidents at the rate Uber does, they'd be held liable and they'd receive conspiracy charges.
Perhaps the same should happen to people who come up with such schemes behind the corporate veil.
Precisely - I think this falls to the classic problem of who to blame in accidents involving self-driving cars. Is the manufacturer at fault? The driver? Certainly statements like this suggest it could be argued in this case.
