Corporate Criminal Liability

Paper Summary:

This paper analyzes and examines the various issues related to corporate criminal liability. Executives and managers may be criminally prosecuted as individuals for the actions of their businesses, even if they neither knew about nor had any role in the crime. Thus, executives and managers may be sentenced to jail time simply for company violations that occurred on their watch. This paper discusses some of the applicable case law and statutes with examples from real life cases and then outlines how executives and managers may avoid or minimize their risk of criminal liability. It concludes with recommendations for improving corporate ethics.

From the Paper:

"Criminal prosecution of executives and managers for the actions of their businesses sharply increased during the 1960s and again in the 1980s after the junk bond and Savings and Loan scandals erupted. Various factors contributed to the rise in criminal prosecution of executives and managers for the actions of corporations. First, prosecutors became much more willing to take action against individual managers for criminal offenses by their businesses. Second, both Congress and the states incorporated criminal penalties for responsible individuals into an increasing number of regulatory statutes. Third, courts became more willing to interpret these statutes as public welfare legislation and to hold businesses and their executives and managers strictly liable for the consequences of a violation."

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