Corporations and Jail Time

If I went into my neighbor's home and stole his stereo, PlayStation and iPod, I would expect to be in some state of criminal trouble should I be caught, not to mention having to return the merchandise, and pay for court costs and any civil infractions my neighbor feels savvy to file against me. Why is it that Multi-billion dollar companies can rob each other blind and no one goes to jail? Lets look at the Blackberry situation for example.

The Blackberry is a PDA type device that mashes a cellphone, PDA functionality, email, internet, music and more into one single device. Blackberry technology is owned by Research In Motion (RIM)which is currently involved in a patent dispute with NTP Inc. NTP has proved in court that it has patented the technology that RIM has been selling since 1999. Furthermore, the facts in the case prove that RIM knowingly stole the technology from NTP. NTP had been offered a settlement in excess of $400 million, which it declined.

Now lets look at a dumbed down example of what the real world is like. Lets say, I go next door and steal my neighbors car. He finds out I stole it. I flip him off and tell him to get bent. The police shortly arrive and take me away and I go to jail on a felony charge of Grand Theft Auto. In the corporate world, some CEO would steal the same car and instead of being arrested, he's be sued by the car's owner, all the while still cruising around in the car. It would take about 6 years for the lawsuit and several appeals to be finalized and in the end, the CEO would settle out of court for half the value of the car, which he gets to keep. Anyone see a problem here?

There are actually two problems here. Problem One is the lack of Corporate responsibility. A corporation is treated like a legal entity itself. Its the nature of the definition of a corporation. You cant very well put a corporation in jail, but you can sue them. The problem here is that someone had to sign off on this idea, knowing full well that they were robbing another man \ company. Why isn't that man, or committee, accountable? Using our car theft example, this would be like a gang. The Don sends out Guido and Tommy to go steal the car. It's the Don who is ultimately guilty, but rarely takes the fall.

This leads us to Problem Two, Money. If you have enough money, you can buy your way out of trouble. The same thing happened to an aftermarket automotive part manufacturer a few years back. Auto-lite made this formitable Platinum Spark Plug, so their competitor, Champion, bought a few cases of them and sent them to the engineering department to figure out how to make their own version of the Spark Plug. $50 million later, Champion gets to keep making the plug. No one goes to jail. One example against this might be the Enron executives that are seeing jail time. Enron ran out of money though.

This money issue goes into personal criminal and civil cases as well. In my honest opinion, the following people have got out of very incriminating circumstances because of their bankrolls.

O.J. Simpson
Robert Blake
Michael Jackson

This is just a few Celebrities, this doesn't count the politicians and Executives that literally get away with Murder at times. We need to start taking a common sense look at our Corporate world and start making people accountable for their actions.