Life After Amchem: The Class Struggle Continues, page 15

Life After Amchem (continued)

Page 15

Perhaps it is most fitting that plaintiffs increasingly resort to state courts as their battlegrounds of choice for their claims against corporate defendants. Although the law recognizes corporations as persons and makes no distinction between the human and the corporate, and although corporations enjoy perpetual existence and an accumulation of capital unmatched by mere humans, it was not always so. Modern limited-liability corporations are creations of the mid-to-late nineteenth century.⁵⁷ They are creatures of state charter -- not federal law -- and exist at the state's sufferance. As a principle of law, courts must make no distinction between humans and corporations as equal persons before the law: every jury receives this instruction in every trial involving a corporate defendant.⁵⁸

However, how this equality is implemented to achieve justice between these two very different categories of persons is in the ambit of the equity jurisdiction employed by every court. That corporations dread the states who gave them life, and that corporations have fueled a massive outcry against the notion of nationwide classes in state courts, is the ultimate irony. State-chartered corporations act nationally and internationally. State courts to whom they owe their existence should be free to certify nationwide classes of individuals with claims against them. Only then will the equitable precepts of economy, efficiency, equal access, and empowerment be fulfilled.

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NOTES

⁵⁷ See, STEPHEN B. PRESSER, PIERCING THE CORPORATE VEIL § 1.02 (rev. ed. 1997); Oscar Handlin & Mary F. Handlin, Origins of the American Business Corporation, 5. J. ECON. HIST. 1, 3 (1945).

⁵⁸ See, e.g., H. ALSTON JOHNSON, III, 18 LOUISIANA CIVIL LAW TREATISE, CIVIL JURY INSTRUCTIONS § 2.01 (1994).

You must deliberate on this case without regard to sympathy, prejudice, or passion for or against any party to the suit. This means that the case should be considered and decided as an action between persons of equal standing in the community. A corporation or an insurance company is entitled to the same fair trial at your hands as a private individual. All persons stand equal before the law, and are to be dealt with as equals in a court of justice.

Id.