This is fines with extra steps. That’s the point. Talk of a “corporate death penalty” is a red herring.
The article mentions the $62bn “researchers estimated…that the costs of just two forever chemicals, PFOA and PFOS — in terms of disease burden, disability and health-care expenses — amounted to,” which “exceeds the current market value of 3M.” A $62bn fine would cleanly end 3M.
You know what 3M would love instead of a $62bn fine? A “corporate death penalty.” Unprecedented and thus practically infinitely appealed in the legal system, riddled with ambiguity, and a political football they can play with for years.
One way of enacting a corporate death penalty is to declare that when a fine is larger than the company's value, the fining body simply nationalizes it and takes it over.
What is done with it afterwards is debatable, but at least the shareholders who permitted it are wiped out.
> declare that when a fine is larger than the company's value, the fining body simply nationalizes it and takes it over
This, again, is fines with extra steps. Another novel procedure that gives targets years in court to appeal technicalities around the APA, eminent domain and expropriation.
> at least the shareholders who permitted it are wiped out
As they would with large fines.
Corporate death penalties are nonsense invented to sidestep discussions of monetary penalties. Fines are liabilities. There is zero ambiguity around what happens to a company when it owes more than it’s worth. There is infinite ambiguity around applying a “death penalty” to fictitious entities; that is the point of this caper.
This is fines with extra steps. That’s the point. Talk of a “corporate death penalty” is a red herring.
The article mentions the $62bn “researchers estimated…that the costs of just two forever chemicals, PFOA and PFOS — in terms of disease burden, disability and health-care expenses — amounted to,” which “exceeds the current market value of 3M.” A $62bn fine would cleanly end 3M.
You know what 3M would love instead of a $62bn fine? A “corporate death penalty.” Unprecedented and thus practically infinitely appealed in the legal system, riddled with ambiguity, and a political football they can play with for years.