Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal News Blogs -> Lawbeat

Legal News

: Lawbeat

Corporate crime reference misses mark

By Mark Obbie

Lynnley Browning's front-pager in the Times on the $780 million settlement between the federal government and UBS -- a deal casting a harsh light on Swiss banking practices -- contains a curious graf near the end:Perhaps that's true if your corporate-crime knowledge extends about as far as the Arthur Andersen case. But it's not true otherwise. Countless major corporations walk the corporate streets with serious rap sheets. And we're not just talking fringe companies. Exxon, Pfizer, General Electric, Archer Daniels Midland, Northrop, Royal Caribbean Cruises, Chevron, Georgia Pacific, Alcoa -- hundreds of big names, public companies and privately held, with criminal convictions. There are many lists (and Times archival stories) available. Here's a dated but reputable one. Browning's editors might have questioned the sentence simply on the basis that the same day's paper has this story by Kirk Johnson on a criminal trial set to start today in Montana -- where W.R. Grace & Co. is among the defendants.  With more digging, Browning might have crafted a narrower but true sentence about particular types of companies, in particular situations, that may indeed collapse the moment they're indicted. For now, readers are left with a false impression about how rare and doomed a corporate criminal defendant is.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on February 19, 2009 (boomark / email).