Sue Them All

(Continued from Let's Sue Starbucks)

The corporation is a person who, according to American law, has legal obligations to its shareholders to act only for profit. Corporate executives can be sued by shareholders if they act for any other reasons. Other kinds of people in America act for reasons other than profit: they play and watch games, they raise families, they make gifts without expectation of return, and sometimes can be seen performing spontaneous acts of generosity. People often give up the chance of making profit, instead seeking the rewards of doing something well.

If corporations in our law are persons, this means they are a particular kind of person. They have specific characteristics. For example, when corporations hire their employees, as corporate persons they will seek to hire people like "themselves", with their corporate nature, described above as seeking profit ahead of playing, love of family and children, love of making gifts and doing things for their own sake, spontaneous act of generosity.

If two people are applying for the same job, and one person exhibits the corporate character and the other does not, the corporation will select the person more like itself.

Since corporations are to be treated as persons in law, they also must be treated as persons with a certain character, favoring which character in their business dealings may often be illegal, be what's known as discrimination.

I have a simple proposal. Let's sue them all.* Yesterday, in the company of my friend, Starbucks Corp at their local store was handed the legal notice the first line of which reads, "You are being sued!". The State of California summons them to respond. This is not proper procedure, I've been told by lawyers. The corporate executives should be named and served in their corporate headquarters. But since I am suing them for their behavior as persons, I am assuming that as persons their behavior occurs at a particular place, the local store.

I'll keep you posted.

(Continued at Let's Sue Starbucks 2)

* If a corporation can be considered a person in legal thinking, it is not going too far to consider worship of money and the "free market" a form of religion, and the preferential treatment of money worshippers illegal religious discrimination. According to the U.S. Dept. of Justice: 'Federal laws prohibit discrimination based on a person's national origin, race, color, religion, disability, sex, and familial status. Laws prohibiting national origin discrimination make it illegal to discriminate because of a person's birthplace, ancestry, culture or language.'