Imagine setting the precedent that the government can unilaterally decide to steal your property based on something your great grandfather did which wasn't even a crime. Do you not see how such a power might be abused in future when you can retroactively punish people for laws where the ink has yet to dry and that they never even committed?
Imagine if your grandfather or great grandfather killed people in the Concentration camps and then harvested all the gold and silver from their victims and then left that money to you? You live in wealth from others destroyed lives. This is a same thing but with the ramifications relieved later. People who knowingly dumped toxic sludge into the environment, cashed in a portion of my life so they and their children and grandchildren could live wealthy lives. And yes, it was all legal in both cases too.
> That will never stand up in court.
What's your point or objection to a hypothetical future?
"Equality under the law" is a pretty strong argument. Corporations are legal people, and the law treats all people the same. Setting up classes of people with different laws that apply differently is absolutely not something that would fly.
That is incorrect. Under some contexts and situations, they are treated and considered the same as people. This is not the same thing. IBM isn't sent a ballot to vote, it is not a "legal person".
I've never heard of a corporation going to jail or being given the chair.
I'm sure the people of Libby, Montana would have an interesting take on this.
Well, you don't have to imagine it, because that's reality.
Where's the line between knowingingly circumventing the spirit of the law by following the letter.
For example Teflon has been replaced with chemically similar compounds that just aren't Teflon. It'll take decades for the studies to come in, in the mean time every human is being exposed to these chemicals in significant amounts.
Then we have bpa, Neonicotinoids and other pesticides. We have cases where companies knowingly sell talc contaminated with asbestos for decades.
We know these products kill people, we now the companies that make thenknow they are killing people and yet we can't claw back decades of fraudulently acquired profits and revenues?
Imo, we should treat these behaviors like Nazis where everything they touched gets seized, even decades later. If that ruins some lives, well, whose worse off? The injured class or the child who inherited blood money?
Also, what if the company has been acquired since then, is it still on the hook? What if they've since switched markets entirely? What if the company disbanded and the founders created a new company in the same market? There's no clean way to deal out punishment in a legally unambiguous or overreaching way.
> Also, what if the company has been acquired since then, is it still on the hook?
It might not be clean, but I do believe it is unambiguous. Yes, the purchaser is still on the hook, and they should check their purchase agreement for the company to see if they can seek restitution from the original owners (assuming the risk of future litigation wasn't disclosed or waived). In this case the company knew they were externalizing a toxic chemical and did it anyways, thus they are liable to the extent the law allows. The original owner is potentially liable for breach of the purchase agreement if that risk wasn't disclosed to the new owner.
Both/And. It's a regulation failure, and the unscrupulous take advantage it.
We've gotten way too fixated on the theoretical worst case to realize that we're already living in a pretty bad story.
Let's deal with future harms when they happen, but let's deal with existing ones now.