Le Sequoit

Quality is Being the Jobbed One, Part II (the evil junction of a typical corporation and the law)

Not satisfied with acts such as suing the village of Volo, IL because Google might suggest Volvo was a misspelling, the corporate lawyers of Ford Motor Company have apparently threatened the bejeezuz out of some citizen who had the audacity to provide a forum for letters of complaint.

Now, if you Google “Ford Focus Problems” or “Fox Lake Ford” you will still see a link to my long letter about several dealers’ incompetence, one dealer’s flat-out dishonesty, and Ford’s utter dismissal of any responsibility for the dealers that fly its logo.

But you won’t see the letter. The only reference to Ford in the site is a link to an opinion piece, and that comes up blank as well. The only hint of what happened is a mention of having a recent run-in with a corporate attorney.

Free speech ends at the corporate boundary. It is certain that this person was threatened with legal action by this international colossus. Whether he was within his rights is lost in the fact that once legal action is threatened the David of this story faces financial ruin in the mere consideration of standing up for them.

My rights are abridged as well, I must accept as fate that $800.00 was stolen from me. I must accept that I can no longer at least have posted my letter on a tree visible from the street, even if on private property. I will try to post this as visibly as possible—if I have some success eventually the lawyers at Ford will send me a letter—inevitably I will have to choose between taking it down or financing a battle with everything that I own. While “Quality is Being the Jobbed One” would be correctly defended as satire by the Comedy Channel the legal structure would never afford me that opportunity.

For David and Goliath is a myth, and for victims of corporations so is the First Amendment.

posted by sequoit @ 8:22 AM