Cyrus Dugger

Businesses Seek Protection on Legal Front

More on this issue soon, but in the short term this development speaks for itself.

Talk about tort reform, these proposed changes are the tort “reform” movement’s dream.

How can we make corporations obey the laws of our nation if we can’t enforce these laws in any meaningful way?

Why should corporations be given increased legal protection from criminal protection or private suits (nearing practical immunity) when human beings do not?

Tort “reformers” say that enforcement of our laws against corporations is bad for business, costs jobs, and makes us less competitive.

When individual human beings steal from each other and make a profit by selling these goods on the black market in violation of our criminal laws, they could also make a lot more money if they were protected from prosecution and suit by anybody trying to hold them to account.

Something to think about.

Businesses Seek Protection on Legal Front
By STEPHEN LABATON
WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 — Frustrated with laws and regulations that have made companies and accounting firms more open to lawsuits from investors and the government, corporate America — with the encouragement of the Bush administration — is preparing to fight back.
Now that corruption cases like Enron and WorldCom are falling out of the news, two influential industry groups with close ties to administration officials are hoping to swing the regulatory pendulum in the opposite direction. The groups are drafting proposals to provide broad new protections to corporations and accounting firms from criminal cases brought by federal and state prosecutors as well as a stronger shield against civil lawsuits from investors.
Although the details are still being worked out, the groups’ proposals aim to limit the liability of accounting firms for the work they do on behalf of clients, to force prosecutors to target individual wrongdoers rather than entire companies, and to scale back shareholder lawsuits.
The groups hope to reduce what they see as some burdens imposed by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, landmark post-Enron legislation adopted in 2002. The law, which placed significant new auditing and governance requirements on companies, gave broad discretion for interpretation to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The groups are also interested in rolling back rules and policies that have been on the books for decades. (link to full article)

Posted at 12:30 PM, Oct 30, 2006 in Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)