Motorist Claims Corporation Papers Are Carpool Passengers

Motorist Claims Corporation Papers Are Carpool Passengers(wired.com)

13 points by patricktomas 13 years ago | 22 comments

bcherry 13 years ago |

Carpool Lane: "2 or more persons per vehicle"

CA Vehicle Code: '"Person" includes a natural person, firm, copartnership, association, limited liability company, or corporation.' (http://dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d01/vc470.htm)

Pretty reasonable argument in the abstract.

But I don't think that the Articles of Incorporation should be considered a physical manifestation of that corporation, so I don't see how you could claim that the corporation was "in the vehicle".

dasil003 13 years ago | |

On the other hand if he's the sole board member and the articles and his laptop with all the work were in the car, how could it not be in the car ;)

anigbrowl 13 years ago | |

Meaningless without consideration of the precedent. sloppy drafting, I agree, but we need to question whether 'person' is used in the context of ownership/liability here (in which case it makes perfect sense) or in the context of driver and passenger (in which case it doesn't, but which courts have likely settled already).

anigbrowl 13 years ago | |

But I don't think that the Articles of Incorporation should be considered a physical manifestation of that corporation, so I don't see how you could claim that the corporation was "in the vehicle".

I'm not sure as I haven't studied it, but I suspect the corporation 'lives' at the address for service; alternatively, in a filing cabinet in the CA Secretary of State's office ;-) It certainly doesn't travel around with its papers, any more than you are your passport.

ChuckMcM 13 years ago |

I thought it was a clever way to gain standing in order to litigate. While it might get the guy off a quick clarification in the Ca law would close the loophole. As a publicity stunt to drive the conversation about rights versus rights assignable entities it seems to have achieved that objective.

malandrew 13 years ago |

Given his intent with this, I would love something like this to make it to the SCOTUS, since the granting of personhood to corporations is absurd and needs to be overruled. Giving a corporation personhood gives it all the rights of being a person with none of the consequences. You can't jail a corporation like you can with people.

anigbrowl 13 years ago | |

So when you need to make a contract with a corporation, who will you make it with? When you want to sue one, who will you sue? The individual officers? How are you going to prove they were responsible? If you sue the CEO because of something his subordinates did, and he dies 6 months later, what would happen to your legal action?

The legal fiction of corporate personhood exists for a good reason; it allows parties external to the corporation to transact business with and take action against the corporation without needing to know the individual structure of it. It's called a corporation because corpore is the Latin for body, giving it a distinct legal identity.

dlss 13 years ago | | |

> When you want to sue one, who will you sue?

Okay, since I'm sensing this is about to become a type theory conversation, let's start with the function definition:

sue :: Person -> Claim -> Person -> Maybe Money

Now you're basically saying that, given the above definition, we have no choice but to have Company implement the Person typeclass. Unfortunately, there is a lot of code already using the Person typeclass for purposes that are absurd when a Corporation is passed. Consider:

valid_for_carpool :: [Person] -> Boolean

So what to do? One option is to send out emails telling our colleagues to be very careful when using the Person typeclass. The other option is to create a new Suable typeclass, and implement it for both corporations and people.

Which one do you prefer?

thwest 13 years ago | | |

Yeah so keep the useful senses of the definition and not the harmful senses (unlimited political speech). This is not paradox inducing.

pdonis 13 years ago | |

I sympathize with the intent of this; I agree that the doctrine of corporate personhood, in its current form, has done far more harm than good. (I don't favor abolishing it, but rather modifying it along the lines given downthread, by factoring out the aspects of personhood that corporations should share and only giving corporations those aspects.)

But I seriously doubt that this method of getting the issue before a court will work. There are way too many legasl dodges that can be taken before it gets to that point. To really get it to SCOTUS, one would need to have a case where far more substantial harm is done and where the doctrine of corporate personhood plays a key role in the harm. I don't see that here; it's too obviously a ploy and too easy to label as frivolous.

anywherenotes 13 years ago | |

From my limited understanding of law (based on what I found when I was looking to incorporate): There is a 'natural person' and 'legal person'. A natural person is also a legal person, but a legal person doesn't have to be a natural person. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_person

Legal person doesn't have all the same rights, for example I don't think corporation can marry, and thus have a right to not testify against it's partner. (I believe married people can plead 5'th in order to not testify against their spouse.)

Please don't take legal advice from this post, it could be utterly wrong.

jwoah12 13 years ago | | |

Hard to believe that in this day and age, a corporation still doesn't have the right to marry.

sjg007 13 years ago | |

I think that is the point.

zoowar 13 years ago |

Throw them both in jail.