A legal person is not a person, but has personality rights?
Compiled from: Shandong High Court, "Study Reader of the Civil Code of the People's Republic of China"
Case review
In January 2013, Company A authorized a certain advertising and decoration company in Changsha to be its distributor for a certain city's switches in 2013. On September 28, 2013, Company A issued a penalty notice to the Changsha advertising and decoration company for violating regulations, imposing a fine of 15,000 yuan and issuing a nationwide notification. The Changsha advertising and decoration company disagreed and raised multiple objections.
Meanwhile, on December 20, 2013, Company B authorized the Changsha advertising and decoration company to act as an agent for the first phase of a college relocation and expansion project, with the authorization period from December 20, 2013, to December 20, 2014. Later, after Company B learned of the penalty notice issued by Company A to the Changsha advertising and decoration company, it terminated the authorization, causing the Changsha advertising and decoration company to be unable to proceed with project-related work.
The Changsha advertising and decoration company claimed that it had invested substantial preliminary costs to secure the supply rights for the project. According to industry practice, the Changsha advertising and decoration company could have obtained a minimum expected profit of 773,606 yuan. Therefore, the Changsha advertising and decoration company believed that Company A's baseless and malicious penalty not only severely infringed on its legitimate rights, such as the right to reputation, but also caused significant losses, and Company A should compensate accordingly under the law.
To this end, a certain advertising decoration company in Changsha requested the court to uphold its legitimate rights and interests, ordering Company A to compensate the advertising decoration company for economic losses of 1,173,306 yuan and interest; and ordering Company A to publish an apology statement approved by the advertising decoration company in a certain newspaper for three consecutive days.
[1] Court Opinion
During the trial of this case, Company A failed to provide sufficient and strong contractual and factual evidence to prove the legitimacy of its penalty against the advertising decoration company. Therefore, Company A's aforementioned actions objectively damaged the reputation interests of the advertising decoration company.
The court ruled: Company A shall issue a written apology to the advertising decoration company within five days of this judgment taking effect (the content must be approved by this court; if Company A refuses to comply, this court will select a nationally distributed newspaper to publish the main content of the judgment, with the costs borne by Company A); Company A shall compensate the advertising decoration company for losses of 50,000 yuan within five days of this judgment taking effect.
Article 110, Paragraph 2 of the Civil Code
Legal persons and unincorporated organizations enjoy rights to name, reputation, and honor.
[1] The author's perspective
In daily life, people often pay more attention to the protection and respect of natural persons' personality rights, while having limited understanding and awareness of legal persons' personality rights. Although legal persons and unincorporated organizations are not flesh-and-blood individuals, as legal constructs, they also enjoy important personality interests, which are often closely related to their economic interests.
Therefore, business operators must pay attention to protecting their own enterprise's personality rights, as a company's reputation directly affects its credibility and economic interests. Once an enterprise's reputation rights are harmed through insults, defamation, or other forms, it must take up legal weapons to defend its rights. Similarly, it must respect the personality rights of other enterprises and refrain from publishing statements that infringe on the personality interests of legal persons and unincorporated organizations online or in real life, otherwise, it will bear legal liability for damaging personality interests.
