Frieman contests carpool violation, corporate personhood... | Hacker News Reader

Frieman contests carpool violation, corporate personhood...

pacificsun.com

67 pointscramforce33 comments

He's going to lose because having the incorporation papers in the car does not mean he has the corporation in the car. I would argue that a corporation's physical location is its registered agent address.

I would go further and argue that a corporation is an abstract legal entity, and thus has no physical location. A corporation's buildings or employees may be located somewhere, but that doesn't mean that "the corporation is there".

I would go even further than that and state that this is a classic example of nerds completely failing to understand what the justice system is for (hint: it isn't a state machine).

I agree with your location assessment, and if a lower-level judge pushes this hard enough, I don't see an appeal as a viable avenue.

I hope so. Corporate personhood gets a bad rep, but without the ability to form corporations to shield us from liability much of what we enjoy today would not be possible.

You are conflating two entirely different things.

The existence of the corporate veil, that shields owners from personal liability, is written into the laws that define what a corporation is and will survive no matter what happens with the corporate personhood issue.

The concept that corporations are people with rights that were originally meant for people comes from court precedents. Congress never passed a law saying that corporations should have free speech, and money is a type of speech, therefore corporations can donate to political campaigns. The courts decided that corporations are people, and decided that the Bill of Rights applies to these fictitious people.

I'll augment this with an excerpt:

"A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it, either expressly or as incidental to its very existence. These are such as are supposed best calculated to effect the object for which it was created. Among the most important are immortality, and, if the expression may be allowed, individuality; properties by which a perpetual succession of many persons are considered as the same, and may act as a single individual. They enable a corporation to manage its own affairs and to hold property without the perplexing intricacies, the hazardous and endless necessity of perpetual conveyances for the purpose of transmitting it from hand to hand. It is chiefly for the purpose of clothing bodies of men, in succession, with these qualities and capacities that corporations were invented and are in use."

-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 1819

Corporations have rights because human beings have rights: they're just using the corporation to exercise those rights. But you'll note that there are some rights which aren't really transferrable, such as voting, and that corporations don't get to exercise those. Likewise, being eligible to be counted as an occupant of a vehicle for the purposes of carpool statutes... not really transferrable either.

definitely agree, gonna be tough to argue that the corporation itself was "present" in his car

For the sake of argument, I'd say that if the car was registered in the corporation's name then yes, the corporation was present in the car.

Reasoning: if the car had been involved in an accident, who would be sued? Just the driver alone, or the driver and the car's owner?

Both more than likely. First the injury lawyer would get as much as they can from the company's insurance, THEN if that was successful. They could go down the path to get money from the driver, seeing how it was their fault to begin with. It's all really up to how greedy / badly injured the victim is.

The issue in this case is the meaning of the word "person" in the California Vehicle Code, and has nothing to do with corporate personhood which is an established legal doctrine going back hundreds of years. Presumably, the carpool statute requires another "person" in the car, "person" being defined elsewhere in the code as a natural person or corporation. Fortunately, our judicial system gives judges the power to interpret statutes. Since corporations are legal fictions without a corpus, or physical body, the judge will likely hold that a corporation cannot satisfy the "person" requirement in the carpool statute. He will interpret the statute to require a natural person, not a corporation. If this case does go up the chain, look for the legislature to amend the statute in the next session.

This is silly. He's challenging the state's vehicle code not "corporate personhood". If this is some retaliation for Citizens United he'll be surprised to hear that the ruling didn't establish corporate personhood at all.

Yeah, there's so much wrong with that article...

Not only is he challenging the state vehicle code (which means, win or lose, even on appeal, it will lead at MOST to a revision of the California vehicle code), but as you say Citizens United does not establish corporate personhood.

At most they've found some poor drafting in a state statute, but even so the most likely outcome is they'll be laughed at. The obvious route is for a court to say "sure, a company counts as a person for this statute but you didn't have a company, you had the incorporation papers, which is different".

What a poltroon.

I though corporate personhood was just about the ability for a corporation to be party to a contract.

That's part of it, but not even the most important part. The other half is this:

Can the US government announce that the New York Times may no longer run stories critical of administration policy? Can they confiscate Apple's cash reserves to help pay off the national debt? Can they, without permission or a warrant, march into Google's data centers and read through all the email stored in Gmail?

The answer to these questions is, respectively, no, no, and no. But why? The reason is not that the NYT, Apple, and Google are people with rights to free speech, property, and privacy; rather it is because the shareholders of these firms are real people with such rights, they do not lose these rights merely because they have organised their affairs to take the corporate form, and it would negatively impact their rights if the courts did not extend protection to the corporations they own.

In other words, corporate personhood is a legal fiction which is deployed when (and only when) not doing so would impair the rights of real people. This explains why the NYT gets free speech rights (it would negatively impact the free speech rights of Sulzberger family who own the NYT to take them away), but doesn't get to vote (since not letting a company vote does not impact the rights of real people to vote).

TL;DR: The main reason for corporate personhood is so that the government can't violate peoples free speech, property rights, privacy right, etc just because they have organised their affairs as a corporation.

It also means that if Comcast rips you off, you can sue Comcast. You don't have to chase diffusion of responsibility around to sue the individual humans who wronged you.

Another important reason for corporate 'personhood' is so corporations can be sued.

No chance of success I'd say, at least here in the UK. The physical location of the corporate entity would be the companies registered address, that place where, statutorily, communications are mandated. If he was driving to that companies registered address, then to succeed he would need to show firstly that it's possible for the corporate entity, a thing indivisible by nature of its personhood, could be both in his car and legally placed locationally with his destination at the same time.

Perhaps he could say that that it was a baby person, not being fully incorporated yet. But I doubt he had a baby seat in the car with him, so I'm not sure that would work either.

God the Pacific Sun is such a piece of shit publication. I wonder if they still bother distributing free newspapers because most people in Marin wouldn't take one if they got paid for it.

So if I have my kids' birth certificates with me, I'm cool, right?

My initial thought was that it would be thrown out due to the corporation technically being wherever its registered address was. Then I started thinking about the Nexus laws that states used to attempt to tax Amazon based on its use of affiliates and the idea of the corporations location became a little more fuzzy...

Would a pregnant woman count as a single occupant of the car?

I was surprised to see the answer to this question in the CHP car pool FAQ:

http://www.chp.ca.gov/html/answers.html

Interesting. Guess that means that the corporation is the equivalent of a foetus.

I'm sure there's a metaphor in there somewhere!

Yup, tested in court: http://www.snopes.com/autos/law/carpool.asp

"Dickinson chose to fight the ticket by asserting in court that Arizona traffic laws don't define what a person is, so the child inside her womb justified her use of the lane.

Phoenix Municipal Court Judge Dennis Freeman used a "common sense" definition of the statutes governing use of HOV lanes in which an individual occupies a "separate and distinct" space in a vehicle. "The law is meant to fill empty space in a vehicle," Freeman said."

This just in: California has a lot of nutty, lawsuit-happy 'activists'. Marin County, especially so.

isn't this just an extreme case of justification by any means? It's a two person lane... corporate papers are not people, despite whatever legal definition has been attributed to it. It's called common sense people!

Is there another source that clarifies the claim that CA law explicitly includes corporations in the car pool lane laws? As it is, this is such an obvious publicity stunt that I am not inclined to trust the lawyers for Frieman.

Some lady in Seattle goes around "marrying" corporations. Unsurprisingly, they aren't legal marriages.

Right; a corporation is a legal person, but there is an additional distinction in the law - you can only marry a natural person (which means the obvious thing).

I haven't looked at the relevant laws, but even if this guy wins his case they will just patch the law to explain that the rules in carpool lanes require natural persons.

Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_person

Not even a patch may be necessary. At most, the court will rule that corporations don't count as persons for the purposes of carpool lane rules, and the precedent will serve as case law in case anybody else is as stupid as this guy.

CA Vehicle Code section 470: '"Person" includes a natural person, firm, copartnership, association, limited liability company, or corporation.' -- http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d01/vc470.htm

CA Vehicle Code section 21655.5 (b): ' The Department of Transportation and local authorities, with respect to highways under their respective jurisdictions, shall place and maintain, or cause to be placed and maintained, signs and other official traffic control devices to designate the exclusive or preferential lanes, to advise motorists of the applicable vehicle occupancy levels, and, except where ramp metering and bypass lanes are regulated with the activation of traffic signals, to advise motorists of the hours of high-occupancy vehicle usage. No person shall drive a vehicle upon those lanes except in conformity with the instructions imparted by the official traffic control devices. A motorcycle, a mass transit vehicle, or a paratransit vehicle that is clearly and identifiably marked on all sides of the vehicle with the name of the paratransit provider may be operated upon those exclusive or preferential use lanes unless specifically prohibited by a traffic control device.' -- http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d11/vc21655_5.htm

So that references whatever is on the sign (in case of three or more occupancy required), I couldn't find an image of the signs around here, and this isn't a super official site, but it says the signs say "Two or more persons per vehicle, motorcycles and ILEVs permitted" -- http://rideshare.511.org/511maps/hov_lanes.aspx

But Section 21655.5 (f) 'It is the intent of the Legislature, in amending this section, to stimulate and encourage the development of ways and means of relieving traffic congestion on California highways and, at the same time, to encourage individual citizens to pool their vehicular resources and thereby conserve fuel and lessen emission of air pollutants.'

So, without the intent clause; I think it's reasonable to interpret "Two or more persons" to include corporations, but as it does not impact traffic congestion, I don't see how it fits into the intent clause, so I think there is considerable freedom for a Judge to consider the intent of the legislature and deny this interpretation.

I agree that the most likely consequence is to alter this section of the vehicle code to expressly consider natural persons only.

> I think it's reasonable to interpret "Two or more persons" to include corporations

But are there any legal grounds to suggest that a corporation is always located where its incorporation papers are?

Even if the judges took this line of reasoning seriously this far, we have to figure out where a corporation is located. It's probably at a headquarters, or at least whatever address they've confirmed with the secretary of state for receipt of service.

Yes, showing that the corporation is in the vehicle would also be difficult, and I do doubt that location of the incorporation papers constitute the location of the corporation.

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