Francis T. Cullen - Corporate Crime Under Attack: The Fight to Criminalize Business Violence

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Corporate Crime Under Attack

The Fight to Criminalize Business Violence

Francis T. Cullen University of Cincinnati
Gray Cavender Arizona State University
William J. Maakestad Western Illinois University
Michael L. Benson University of Cincinnati

second edition

Corporate Crime Under Attack: The Fight to Criminalize Business Violence, Second Edition

First published 2006 by Anderson Publishing

Published 2015 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright 1987, 2006
Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notices
No responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any in ury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use of operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein.

Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Corporate crime under attack: the fight to criminalize business violence / by Francis T. Cullen... [et al.] -- 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Rev. ed. of: Corporate crime under attack: the Ford Pinto case and beyond / Francis T. Cullen, William J. Maakestad, Gray Cavender. 1987.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59345-955-0 (pbk)
1. Ford Motor Company--Trials, litigation, etc. 2. Trials (Homicide)--Indiana--Winamac. 3. Trials (Products liability)--Indiana--Winamac. 4. Criminal liability of juristic persons--United States. 5. Corporations--Corrupt practices--United States. 6. Pinto automobile. I. Cullen, Francis T. II. Cullen, Francis T. Corporate crime under attack.

KF224.F67C85 2006
345.73'0268--dc22

2006025354

ISBN-13: 978-1-59345-955-0 (pbk)

Cover design by Tin Box Studio, Inc.

EDITOR Ellen S. Boyne
ACQUISITIONS EDITOR Michael C. Braswell

For:

Paula J. Dubeck and Jordan Cullen
Catherine and Gray Cavender Jr.
Jean Maakestad Wolf
Shelley Paden and Christopher Michael Benson

Table of Contents

This is a book about corporate violence and the long and mounting effort to bring such harm within the reach of the criminal law. In the early part of the last century, businesses could, with virtual impunity, market defective products and diseased food, place workers in unsafe conditions, and spew pollutants into the air and water that jeopardized the health of the general public. This is no longer the case. Corporations that illegally endanger human life now must negotiate the surveillance of government regulators and risk civil suits from injured parties seeking financial compensation. Of more concern to us, they also may be charged with criminal offenses and their officials sent to prison.

Calling attention to corporate violence is not equivalent to taking an anti-business posture any more than studying street crime is an indictment of all individual citizens. Corporations are a key source of our nations wealth, of our individual prosperity, and of our quality of life. But because these enterprises, large and small, touch our lives so intimately, they have the power to sicken, injure, and kill. Observers may debate the precise statistics, but the accumulating evidence suggests that the human toll exacted by illegal corporate practices is extensive. It was once believed that, although companies might commit enormously costly theftssuch as price-fixing, insider trading, and defrauding stock-holdersat least they do not hurt anyone. Given the known scope of corporate violence, this view is now considered a myth.

The fight to criminalize business violence is a tale that is at times complicated but always intriguing. How did corporations come to be subjected to criminal penalties when powerful interests were aligned to protect them from such threats? When business practices harm someone, can it be said that the corporate entity intended to victimize that person and therefore should be held criminally culpable? When no legal statutes exist that specifically outlaw corporate violence, what strategies must be invented to prosecute wayward companies? When businesses are attacked through the criminal law, how do they resist being stigmatized as an offender? And as we move further into the twenty-first century, will the criminal law be an important, or merely a symbolic, weapon in the campaign to reduce corporate violence? Over the course of this book, we attempt to address these and related questions.

In exploring the criminalization of corporations, we use the landmark Ford Pinto case as our centerpiece. Just over 25 years ago, Ford Motor Company was prosecuted for reckless homicide after three teenage girls were burned to death when their Pinto was hit from behind and exploded into flames. A local prosecutor in Elkhart, Indiana, was persuaded that Fords production of, and subsequent failure to repair, the Pintos unsafe fuel system was responsible for the girls deaths. To him, this event was not a tragic accidentas so often occurs on the nations highwaysbut rather was foreseeable and could have been prevented had Ford moved quickly to recall and fix the girls Pinto. Not to do so was to recklessly endanger human life. As a result, he took the pathbreaking step of indicting Ford and of bringing the company to trial.

This is a drama that, we trust, will capture each readers imagination. But this case is important not simply for the interest it sparks and for the chance it offers to glimpse what it is like to try to prosecute a powerful business enterprise. It is also salient because it signifies a major turning point in the fight to criminalize business violence. Although Fords prosecution in Elkhart was a unique decision made by a unique district attorney, we attempt to show that this casethe decision to conceptualize and charge Ford with being a criminalwould not have taken place even a few years before. The Ford Pinto case, in short, was very much a product of its times.

The first section of the book thus tries to depict how, over the course of the twentieth century, a series of legal and social transformations coalesced to make Fords prosecutionits potential criminalizationpossible. How did we reach the point at which a major American company could be charged with being a reckless killer and put on trial? How did the inconceivable become conceivable? Of course, beyond Fords trial and the forces that created this prosecution, there is still the matter of what has transpired in the quarter century since the case concluded. Was Fords prosecution merely an idiosyncratic blip of the historical screen, or was it a harbinger of things to come? Has the fight to criminalize corporationsespecially when their illegal practices damage or take human livesbeen stymied, or has this movement broadened and deepened? What can we expect in the years ahead? In the final part of the book, we take up these significant issues.

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