[LMB] Corporations as People OT: (was: Thor Power Tools, yet again)

[James Nicoll]

On Mon, 3 Dec 2007, Margaret Dean wrote:

> From what I understand, the original reason for the legal fiction
> of a corporation-as-person was so that if the corporation went
> bust, the flesh-and-blood people who owned parts of it could not
> be forced to pay the corporation's debts out of their own
> personal funds.  In an era when people were imprisoned for debt,
> this was no light matter.
>
 	There are still large businesses where stock holders are 
responsible for the company's debts. Lloyd's of London would be one 
example. Back in the 1990s, there were news articles that reported on 
investors liabilities with Shock and Horror, since the people recruiting 
new investors were not esp open about the tsunami of debt LoL was stuck 
with and targeted relative innocents to dilute the company debt.