Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 19.pdf/184

 IMPRISONMENT OF CORPORATIONS

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for such contempt.1 More than forty years of making the corporation, as a legal entity, ago Judge Hogeboom rendered an opinion directly responsible for its acts.1 Mr. Jud dealing in no uncertain terms with this son points out also that the Rate Bill of very question in which he said:' "It is no 1906 restores the penalty of imprisonment repealed in 1903. The fact that it was answer to say that the act of the corpora tion is manifested and carried into effect by necessary to restore this imprisonment is individuals, and that those persons are ■most significant in the present consideration, always liable to the process of the law, and since this gives additional strength to the may be punished, and therefore an injured proposition that a fine imposed on either party has always the means of redress. It individual or corporation is an utterly is a poor compliment to the law to say that, ineffective form of punishment, since in while the principal is the real offender, modern business such penalties for illegal though you cannot reach him you can reach action are not in the least deterrent but are his agent, his instrument. Besides, the simply charged up as necessary expenses agent may be entirely irresponsible or com in the piling up of illegal profits. Imprison ment is the only effective penalty for individ paratively innocent."' It may, therefore, be fairly urged that in ual wrongdoing, and it is surely a logical his final conclusion that injunction is the conclusion that in the development of the effective remedy for corporation evils and law wherein corporations are to be made that violation of injunction should be responsible as legal entities for their mis punished by contempt procedure against the deeds the only effective penalty against individual corporate officials, Mr. Judson is natural persons should also be enforced going backward into the law which has been against the artificial persons known as discarded as unjust and ineffective and is corporations.' With all due respect, therefore, for the opposing the trend of modern judicial opinion which is firmly set in the direction learning exhibited by Mr. Judson and for the plausibility of his reasoning, the writer would take issue most earnestly with his 1 Old View and Modern View of Corporate Contempts. Am. & Eng. Ency. — 2nd Ed. Vol. 7, p. premises and his conclusion. The objections 847.; Thompson Com. on Corporations, Vol. V., to Mr. Judson's five points above stated Sec. 6449. may be summed up as follows : ' People v. Albany & Vermont R. R. Co.; 12 First: Increased penalties for commercial Abbott Pr. 171. wrongdoing will inevitably decrease com 3 Lord Denman, prior to that opinion, had spoken likewise in Railroad v. Great N. & Eng., mercial offenses. 9 Q. B., 315. "There can be no effectual means Second: There are no legally innocent for deterring from an oppressive exercise of power parties and few of moral innocence who for the purpose of gain, except the remedy by an indictment against those who truly commit it, would suffer disaster in the imprisonment that is the corporation, acting by its majority; and of corporations. there is no principle which places them beyond the reach of the law for such proceedings." 1 Old View and Modern View of Corporate In Franklin Union v. People. 220 Ill. 335, the Crimes; Am. & Eng. Ency., 2d Ed., Vol. 7, p. Supreme Court of Illinois held, in referring to the 842. contention that the corporation could not be 2 Bishop, in his Criminal Law, 7th Ed., Sec". punished for contempt: "That doctrine now 423, goes even beyond the imprisonment analogy seems to have been exploded, as all the modern and suggests the death penalty for corporations text writers and adjudicated cases, so far as we where individuals would be hung. "And though have been able to discover, where the question a corporation cannot be hung there is no reason has been fairly presented for consideration or why it may not be fined or suffer the loss of its decision, hold that a corporation may be pun franchise for the same act which would subject an individual to the gallows." ished for a contempt of court."