
 Frieman contests carpool violation, corporate personhood... - cramforce
http://www.pacificsun.com/news/local/article_a50eab78-56c0-11e2-b475-001a4bcf6878.html
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jasonkolb
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.

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greenyoda
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".

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bluedanieru
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).

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joshuaheard
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.

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ewillbefull
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.

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Lazare
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.

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

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Lazare
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.

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philwelch
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.

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gregsq
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.

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carlisle_
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.

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

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brettkw
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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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heymishy
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!

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Evbn
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.

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xyzzy123
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>

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philwelch
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.

