This seems like it could be a credible challenge to the notion of corporate personhood. The ramifications of this case could be huge. I don’t know if the corporate person concept has been challenged before but it seems the argument by the creditors would have to be straight out denial.
I don’t have a strong bias but I side with Mr. Furgatch against the creditors. Will this work?
The law doesn’t say “corporations are persons in every sense of the word”.
And “parent company” is a metaphor: it does not mean a parent (mother or father) as the term is used in family law.
Is there a law?
I thought there was not. Personhood is merely a SCOTUS invention. I could well be mistaken.
I’d add that I could imagine a legal system in which corporations could be adoptive or foster parents, even though they can’t be natural parents. However, I can’t imagine why you would want a corporation treated as a child in family law.
Is MF Global, Inc. under 18 years of age or attending college full time?
You are mistaken. This is a joke or a stunt.
That is not the only definition of a child. Children may be much older than 18 and retain the same relationship with their parent.
The case is on the docket. If it were that easily dismissed would it be?
That corporations are legal “persons” is at the heart of corporate law, and not just a recent invention of the Supreme Court. If they were not legal persons then, for example, if you wanted to sue a manufacturer for making a faulty product that injured you, your legal suit would need to name the officers and shareholders of the corporation, and not just the corporation itself, and you would be trying to recover damages from each of the officers and shareholders. Corporate personality is a very useful device.
Why this then?
If the motion were frivolous would the bankruptcy court hear it?
My guess is that this is a new issue, never raised before, about how the word “child” is interpreted in some bankruptcy legislation, so the court has to deal with it. I suspect that a court of first instance (which this one would be) has to deal with issues raised by parties, no matter how frivolous they appear, unless (for example) the party has previously been ruled as a “vexatious litigant”. You get your day in court, but I suspect that’s all the person raising this issue will get.
(But IANAL, and certainly not a lawyer practising in the State of New York.)
But I thought that the obligation to support a child, at least under US law, was not lifelong, but ended at age 18 or possibly later if the child is attending college full time or is gravely disabled.
Now Johnny, we’ve found a new foster home for you. Penn State has agreed to take you in and you will be officially under the care of the college administration.
That could be better that some real-life foster parents 
The state, city, county are all corporations, They do take custody of children although not termed parents the roll as guardian is similar.
I am a bit frustrated that the left, who I mostly identify has taken corporate person hood up as their version of the “birther” craze
It is good at stirring emotion but if the idea is to overturn the citizens-united ruling it would do nothing to revoke corporate person-hood.
Dont take my word for it, the decision is right here
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-205.ZS.html
To try and simplify the decision the opinion is not “because corporations are people they have a right to political speech”
The decision was “individual do not surrender their right to free speech due to the exercise of their right of assembly based on the fact that the form they chose to organize is a fictional entity”
It is a huge difference, There are issues with corporate person-hood, but again, if you destroyed the concept of a “fictional person” from our body of law citizen’s united’s ruling would still stand.
This has nothing to do with Citizens United (a decision which I support anyway).
I saw a documentary called ‘The Corporation’ (2003). It is definitely leftish but pre-dated CU by years.
Knowing the interesting mores of certain members of boards of directors I am aware of, it’s not entirely out of the question.
Sorry I missed half my post on that reply.
A limited liability company formed by a parent corp will be treated as if the parent corp were an individual, the law suit is without merit unless someone seriously messed up on the charter.
Without the common law “person hood” we would need to establish another type of legal fiction to deal with companies.
IMHO the real solution is to hold the state responsible, they have the ability to revoke charters. Not all rights are afforded to corps, there is a lot we can do besides just dreaming what ever new legal fiction they create is better.
It’s at the heart of basic civil law, period. Treating legally recognized collective entities as “persons” for some legal purposes is something without which a modern society couldn’t function.
I don’t think a lot of people realize that not all companies are corporations and not all corporations are for-profit companies.
Contrary to popular Internet belief and “The Corporation,” this was not invented in 1886, either.
But the issue here is not the denial of personhood, but the acceptance of such so that a child/subsidiary is protected from outside claims by other parties.