"Corporations are people too" It can be said that these words uttered by Mitt Romney the billionaire American Presidential candidate were his most notorious. It certainly damaged his popularity. He was right though. He was talking about a decision by the US Supreme Court that determined that corporations had a right of free speech just like everyone else did, pursuant to the American Constitution.
In the British Commonwealth countries however, that issue had been settled by the Privy Council in 1975 in the Antigua Times case.
The Antigua Times was a newspaper created in Antigua in 1970. It was owned by a company registered as Antigua Times Ltd. The prime mover and shaker in the company was Reuben Harris, then an aspiring politician. The following the year the government introduced heavy registration requirements for newspapers. The company could not afford to keep the paper in circulation so they immediately filed legal proceedings to challenge the new law.
Many prominent and promising lawyers appeared for both sides as the case moved from the High Court to the Court of Appeal and then the Privy Counsel. Those no longer with us include Sir Louis Lockhart (who was Attorney General), and Sydney Christian. The only one now with us is Franklyn Clarke who is now Queen's Counsel.
The Government's team argued (among other things) that although the Constitution protected the rights of a "person" that did not include companies. The Privy Council rejected that argument and stated that the government's position would lead the absurd result that a newspaper publisher would lose the right of free speech if he or she incorporated their business. In fact, they stated that the local courts had already made a similar conclusion in the earlier case of Camacho & Sons Ltd v Attorney General.
Today the Antigua Times case frequently features in text books and court decisions as one of the most important decisions of the Privy Council.
The really unfortunate part of the story is that the newspaper no longer exists.
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