LAW PUNDIT Sunday, January 11, 2004 1/11/2004 08:14:00 PM [Home]
15 months in PRISON for "too much fat"
15 months in PRISON for "too much fat"
The weight watchers of the world should be dancing in the streets. The legal profession should be weeping.
The Curmudgeonly Clerk in "Food, Fraud & Litigation" tell us that the
"The Wall Street Journal reports that:
'Robert Ligon, a 68-year-old health-food executive, is scheduled to begin serving 15 months in a federal prison Tuesday. His crime: willfully mislabeling doughnuts as low-fat.'"
It is really rather pointless to put corporate executives into jail for misleading the public - after all, what corporation and what advertising does NOT do this? Certainly large monetary fines are in order, or even dissolution of companies, but prison?
Once again, I think we all in the law should review Herbert Packer's The Limits of the Criminal Sanction, and simply accept the fact that a criminal sanction for many things - especially putting people into jail for economic crimes such as this - has no rational effect on either perpetrator or victim, has as good as no deterrent effect and is just legal stupidity.
Permalink : Andis Kaulins : 1/11/2004 08:14:00 PM
15 months in PRISON for "too much fat"
15 months in PRISON for "too much fat"
The weight watchers of the world should be dancing in the streets. The legal profession should be weeping.
The Curmudgeonly Clerk in "Food, Fraud & Litigation" tell us that the
"The Wall Street Journal reports that:
'Robert Ligon, a 68-year-old health-food executive, is scheduled to begin serving 15 months in a federal prison Tuesday. His crime: willfully mislabeling doughnuts as low-fat.'"
It is really rather pointless to put corporate executives into jail for misleading the public - after all, what corporation and what advertising does NOT do this? Certainly large monetary fines are in order, or even dissolution of companies, but prison?
Once again, I think we all in the law should review Herbert Packer's The Limits of the Criminal Sanction, and simply accept the fact that a criminal sanction for many things - especially putting people into jail for economic crimes such as this - has no rational effect on either perpetrator or victim, has as good as no deterrent effect and is just legal stupidity.
Permalink : Andis Kaulins : 1/11/2004 08:14:00 PM
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