Although corporations are presumed to be people when it comes to
campaign contributions, per the US Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, they are not the sort of people who go to prison when they break the law.
Por ejemplo, if you or I were found to have engaged in "illegal distribution of controlled substances," spurring a a US Attorney to publicly avow our actions were a "threat to public health and safety," one would certainly expect serious prison time. But, for CVS and HEB pharmacies, who allegedly sold drugs to an unlicensed doctor, the result was a stiff fine: "CVS Pharmacy, Inc. paid a civil penalty of $1,912,500 on Thursday, while
H-E-B paid $262,500 in early August to resolve the alleged violations
of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970," reported the Houston Chronicle ("HEB, CVS, pay more than two million in drug penalties," Sept. 5).
This pattern became apparent after the 2008 financial scandals: Crimes by corporations result in civil settlements that would never be available to an individual defendant in lieu of, say, a plea bargain.
(On the flip side, the justice system seems to offer little recourse when corporations are victims of major crimes, only minor ones. A shoplifter, they can arrest; the hacker who steals millions of credit card numbers from Target is virtually untouchable.)
To be clear, I'm not calling for HEB nor CVS to be prosecuted further, nor for any individual in the company to face prison time. The deal is done. Perhaps instead, though, the same civil settlement approach should be available to other "people" who are not, like corporations, legal fictions designed to distance owners from personal liability? What's good for the goose ...
RELATED: From The Consumerist (Sept. 12): "How corporations got the same rights as people but don't ever go to jail."
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10 comments:
I believe the civil penalty is appropriate here because the crime is one of sloppiness--the pharmacist or pharmacy tech did not properly check the DEA registration as they should have. Whether those individuals should themselves be criminally liable is another question; I'm curious as to whether they were disciplined by their employer.
This actually surprises me for normally pharmacy types are very compulsive individuals--the accountants of the medical field. I know once about 10 years ago my registration expired and I didn't notice it until a Walgreens pharmacist called and ripped me a new one for letting it lapse. Got it fixed immediately.
As a jail and prison doc I see more problems with "legal" drug abuse than I do with "illegal" drugs and in my experience most praticing phamacists (and by extension, the pharmacies) really stay on top of drug diversion as best they can. But the side effect of all this is that it has made life significantly harder for patients and doctors who have legitimate needs for access to narcotic pain relief.
Prison Doc
right on Grits--but I would add corporations should not be considered people re/ campaign finance.
The problem is if you somehow lock these big corporations up for life, a lot of people will lose their jobs. I don't think that would be in our best interest. So, my solution is for the executives or the culpable employees tobe punished in addition to a large fine by the companies.
But then you set up yet another situation where the poor go to jail and the rich just pay
Two words, 2:08: Day fines.
Locking people is an expense to the government. Fining a corporation or a person is revenue. Instead of being outraged at a corporation being fined, be outraged at the civil forfeiture laws that steal money from citizens.
Some of the the biggest drug dealers in Texas are pharmaceutical companies. I've seen more people over the last decade addicted to prescription drugs than any illicite substance. I don't seen narcotics task force running down and kicking in the doors to local doctors or pharmacies, even though some of the medications they are selling are more addictive and dangerous than the stuff sold by the street corner drug dealers.
Day fines? Not familiar with that, can you elaborate?
@Kenneth, Wikipedia has a decent basic explanation of the idea.
"Although corporations are presumed to be people when it comes to campaign contributions, per the US Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, they are not the sort of people who go to prison when they break the law."
I'm not sure that you haven't conflated some of the issues contained in Citizens United. First, although some bloggers hyperventilated about it, it was completely unremarkable for the Court to hold that corporations have first amendment rights. No one on the Court disputed that, and that has been the law for a long time. After all, the New York Times (a corporation, natch), has won cases based on the first amendment. Go figure.
If your point is that corporations should not be punished as persons when it comes to campaign contributions, well, I guess you'll have to take that up with Congress and the Federal Elections Comission.
The point to Citizens United was the much more controversial question of to what extent campaign contributions can constitute "speech".
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