Sentencing A Corporation To Prison
Keeping the whole facts of the case in view, it is evident that there was a moral issue in wrong doings of the company. They were guilty of doing price fixing with the help of Coca Cola, and such act is not only illegal, but immoral as well. However, the sentence that the company got as a whole from the Judge was one of its kinds, because there was no precedent before to sentence the whole corporation for some wrong doing. I don’t see this judgment as a considerable model to deal with such cases. It is true that company was involved in wrong doing, but judge should not have punished the whole corporation as there are many stakeholders, who were not part of the crime like any stockholder, but with such whole sentence, they will also be punished in one way or the other. The judge should have understood that how business corporations work, and then pass his judgment accordingly with some fairness.
It is important for a judge to read the facts and then give a judgment with the real essence of compassion and fairness, which fulfills the requirements of a fair judgment. This judgment made by the judge does not look an appropriate one. If anyone has done wrong in the company, then only concerned ones should be punished for their wrong doings. One cannot punish the whole corporation and sentence the imprisonment. It was a good decision to put some executives on the community service as it would be a lesson for them to avoid such policies in future. As far as this strange judgment is concerned, I don’t think so that other corporations can be deterred by it. The corporations may be more careful in this regard as punishment for Entire Corporation is very damaging and costly in so many ways. The judge should have used some fairness as well as comparison as per the morality of the justice so that a good example would have been set for future.