Corporate moral insolvency: lessons from Purdue Pharma

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article argues that Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, is a morally insolvent corporation – its wrongdoing pervasive or central to the corporation’s operations, its actions causing grave harm, and yet accountability still seems out of reach. It further argues that Purdue helps demonstrate how criminal legal systems are not capable of holding corporations accountable for wrongdoing. For humans, being convicted of a crime often means being sent to jail, and states pay little attention to the plight of children of prisoners. For corporations, criminal legal systems focus on deterrence as a goal, largely because corporations are not capable of suffering from retributive punishments in the way that humans are. But corporate insolvency processes demonstrate that corporations can be restructured, reorganised, and liquidated. This article posits that a system of corporate moral insolvency could better respond to corporate wrongdoing – combining an inquiry-style process of fact finding with a negotiated settlement process providing those with most at stake a means to assert their interests, all while deterring future wrongdoing.