Live data from Hacker News

Frieman contests carpool violation, corporate personhood...

pacificsun.com

21–30 of 34 posts

Re: Frieman contests carpool violation, corporate personhood...

#21
post #18

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!

Re: Frieman contests carpool violation, corporate personhood...

#22

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 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.

Re: Frieman contests carpool violation, corporate personhood...

#23
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.

Re: Frieman contests carpool violation, corporate personhood...

#25
post #22

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 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.

Re: Frieman contests carpool violation, corporate personhood...

#26
post #18

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

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."

Re: Frieman contests carpool violation, corporate personhood...

#27

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).

Re: Frieman contests carpool violation, corporate personhood...

#29
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...

Re: Frieman contests carpool violation, corporate personhood...

#30
post #25
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sayi…

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.

Post reply on HN