Caselaw

Criminal Case (Tel Aviv) 4368-05-16 State of Israel v. Siemens Israel Ltd. - part 63

July 3, 2017
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The defendant argued that it was impossible to separate the organ from the corporation, that is, it was not possible to grant immunity to one and convict the other when it was a matter of one entity, and compared this to a human being.  This argument should not be accepted.  This is an over-"humanization" of the corporation.  This is not a matter of a single body,  but rather of attributing the behavior and thoughts of a human being to a corporation, as the Honorable Justice Y. Kedmi  so well described in the Nehoshtan case (ibid., at p. 124):

Naaman [the human being] and Nehoshtan [the corporation]  bear personal  criminal responsibility for Naaman's actions as an organ of Nehoshtan.  Their responsibility is personal and independent as if they were two, with the underlying behavior being "shared" as if they were one.   The responsibility of Naaman and Nehoshtan is therefore the direct responsibility of the "main offender", when the offense was committed by both of them "jointly and separately".  Indeed, as stated,  the corporation's responsibility lies in the act of the organist, and ostensibly – only the corporation is the perpetrator.  For he is the one who performed the act "by means of  " the organ that serves as his head and hands, and there is no room for separation between the "head and hands" and the "being" whose head and hands are the head and hands.  However, this position is true when we are dealing with a "person" who is a human being, in which case we are dealing with a single "entity", and it is not true when we are dealing with a physical body that simultaneously serves two separate legal "entities": its own and that of the corporation in which it operates.  ...  Indeed, Nehoshtan's responsibility is personal responsibility for the act she performed "through" Naaman, and the relationship between the two – Naaman and Nehoshtan – unites them into one "entity" in this matter.  However, this "unification" of "entities" is unique: on the one hand, it  does create a common  "entity" of an "organ corporation", which operates as an independent body, but on the other hand – It leaves a separate  "entity" for the organ, which remains a "person" even when it acts as a "corporation." 

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