LSAT 158 | Section 1 | Reading Comprehension: Q27

RC Question 27 Explanation

DISCUSSION: This question asks about the author’s beliefs. Broadly, they believe:

• It is good to criminally charge corporations
• Civil litigation isn’t suitable (paragraph 2)
• Nor is charging individual employees suitable (paragraph 2)

Look for an answer that works with one of those beliefs.

___________

1. The author advocates for criminal sanctions over civil sanctions, so this is wrong. The first sentence of paragraph 2 says that criminal litigation provides more deterrence than civil litigation.
2. This answer mixes up paragraph 2 and paragraph 4. In paragraph 4, the author said it is hard to charge individual executives because sometimes we can’t identify the individual responsible. This is about criminal charges and has absolutely nothing to do with civil liability.
    
   The passage doesn’t mention the purpose of civil liability, but you’re allowed to use basic outside understanding of the world: civil liability exists to compensate the damages an individual suffers. So if a corporation destroys your house and causes $300,000 worth of damage, you can sue the corp for $300,000.
    
   But this answer instead says that civil liability is only for cases where corporations do bad things (even crimes), but we can’t find out which executive did them? What sort of wacky civil liability system is that! Like….say a company killed people, but we don’t know which person in the company did it, so there will be no criminal charges, and instead it’s time for a civil lawsuit? This is just a bizarro-world answer. It mixes together words from the passage to form a strange statement.
3. Who knows? We aren’t told whether criminal charges or lawsuits are more common. But, the passage’s first sentence suggests that right now corporations are commonly subjected to criminal sanctions (“well established”). So there’s no reason to think criminal charges are rare.
4. First, ask yourself: who are the theorists who oppose criminal sanctions? That’s the proponents of civil sanctions, the theorists in paragraph 1.
    
   Paragraph 2 tells us that civil litigation requires an identifiable victim. So, anyone who believes civil litigation is the answer must believe that corporations often damage such identifiable victims. If there are no identifiable victims, then how could anyone sue companies with civil litigation?
    
   So, this answer is the opposite of what civil litigation theorists would believe. They have to think that corporate wrongdoing frequently causes identifiable harm to individuals. This answer would have been correct had it said “frequently” instead of “seldom”.
5. CORRECT. In paragraph 2, sentence 3 tells us that civil liability is less of a deterrent since it requires an identifiable victim with resources to sue. This suggests that there are at least some cases where there isn’t an identifiable victim who has the resources to sue.