Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2017 September 20

= September 20 =

Equatorial Guinea airlines (September 14)
There is also the legal doctrine of "corporate personality". The assets of a company cannot be seized to pay the debts of a government even if owns all the shares. There is a limited exemption ("lifting the veil") but that is unlikely to apply here. The first thing that happened when the Companies Act came in about 1860 was that a creditor sued a debtor personally for the debts of a company he had set up claiming that the incorporation was a sham designed to evade payment of his debts. He didn't win. On the subject of leases, if a trader leases a shop a creditor can't seize the shop to recover his debts - the ownership remains vested in the freeholder. Similarly, debtors sometimes transfer their homes into their wife's name to avoid them being seized. 82.12.63.55 (talk) 12:10, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Do you have any additional reading that covers the points you note above, so we can see for ourselves? -- Jayron 32 13:06, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * See Companies Act 1862. 82.12.63.55 (talk) 14:21, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * See the articles about Bankruptcy and Bankruptcy in the United Kingdom which is the area where Companies Act 1862 applied. However Spanish law applied in Equatorial Guinea until independence in 1968. At present Equatorial Guinea's stance on corporate recovery of debt, bankruptcy and receivership is expressed by its membership of OHADA "Organisation for the Harmonization of Business Law in Africa" whose legal interpretations are based on French company law. Blooteuth (talk) 16:53, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Since it isn't a British company, that means then that the Companies Act 1862 doesn't mean bubkis in this case, correct? -- Jayron 32 17:22, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm very bored of this issue by now as I've noted before but I'd agree. More importantly and the only reason I'm replying is to say Equatorial Guinea law may not mean much either. There's no guarantee either Spanish courts or French courts will worry that much about what Equatorial Guinea law says in deciding whether to allow seizure of an airline's property to pay for governmental debt. They may consider the structure of ownership and how their local laws view such structures as more important. It's worth remembering that all sources in those cases which do mention the details for the French case (I'm assuming from the above we still have no good sources on the Spanish case) say it was because state ownership of the airline was unproven rather than because the airline wasn't responsible regardless of who owned them. See also these sources about different cases in Ireland [//flyinginireland.com/2015/09/high-court-releases-congo-airways-airbus-a320-impounded-at-dublin-over-a-debt-row-with-foreign-investors/] and the US  where instead it is noted that the seizure was overturned or rejected because the airline wasn't considered responsble regardless of ownership. Yet even there in the US case it is noted that Piercing the corporate veil is possible in very select circumstances but not in that particular instance. (Our article doesn't cover any details on French or Spanish law surrounding this.)  This seems pointlessly speculatory anyway since as already noted, what we know is that in the French case the seizure was rejected due to an inability to prove state ownership of the airline and the Spanish case we don't know why exactly the seizure threat appears to have been resolved. It would be more useful to find sources which provide further clarification on the specific cases than to look into general aspects of French and Spanish corporation and debtor law, let alone aspects of British or other irrelevant country law. (But as said before,  I'm not interested enough to look any more.)  P.S. An interesting point is that according to this source, in ~2012 Ghana was ranked above Spain (and Portugal) in the CFS' rule of law index . That and other sources discussing the various attempts to seize assets as a result of the Argentine debt restructuring and holdout bond holders may be of interest, although many of the larger ones e.g. the presidential plane and navy ship were clearly government assets and failed due to Sovereign immunity and/or lack of recognition of the US debt jurisdiction.  Nil Einne (talk) 07:10, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure that the "sovereign immunity" argument (mentioned in the now - archived part of this discussion) is a strong one.  After all, firms and individuals do sue governments in one or other of the European courts.   Where a national government is sued in a foreign court they often have an advantage because local lawyers/judiciary are not expert in the laws of the country concerned.   For example, the British government has just won a case brought in a New York court by descendants of Henri Matisse for the return of an allegedly stolen work by the painter.   The judge gave "sovereign immunity" as a reason, a doctrine which appears to be written into the American Constitution.   In Britain, the Crown Proceedings Act 1947 has changed all that. 92.8.220.234 (talk) 11:28, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Joe Weider
He published the first issue of Your Physique magazine as a teenager in 1940,

A TEENAGER? YOU SAID HE WAS BORN IN 1919-1920 !

Kenneth — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.175.66.14 (talk) 18:36, 20 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Fixed now. Thanks, Kenneth.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  18:58, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

WHAT NEEDS FIXING? IF HE WAS BORN IN 1920 HE COULD HAVE BEEN 19 IN 1940! 19:22, 20 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Article says he was born in November 1919, making him 20 until November 1940. So he was never a teenager in 1940. Akld guy (talk) 19:57, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

THE OP DIDN"T SCREAM THAT! But I trust you, Akld guyμηδείς (talk) 06:18, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Sometimes I wonder whether you see the same page as the rest of us. This is one of those times, since I replied in response to the anonymous post directly above mine. Akld guy (talk) 07:45, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The issue might be that until a few weeks ago, the birth year was given as 1920. Then an IP changed it to 1919. But the article still said "as a teenager", because if he were born in 1920, he would have been a teen until late in the year 1940. So the question is, what is his actual birth year? Unfortunately, if the Findagrave entry is correct, his crypt is unmarked. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 10:54, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I see. Strange that the anonymous based his calculation of the age on a date that hasn't been in the article for more than a month. Akld guy (talk) 11:38, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The Findagrave entry says "He published the first issue of Your Physique magazine in 1936 when he was 14 years old, and built a set of barbells out of car wheels and axles the same year. [...] (bio courtesy of: Wikipedia)". So he was a teenager. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 11:17, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * That implies he was born in November 1921 or 1922.  Whatever Wikipedia may have said in the past, it doesn't say that now.   According to this  he was seventeen in August, 1940, implying he was born in November 1922.   However, not quoting from Wikipedia Findagrave gives the birthdate as 29 November 1919.   The article does say he died in March 2013 at the age of 92, which implies a November 1920 birthdate.   However the quoted source, the Los Angeles Times obituary, says he died at 93 and gives the birthdate as 29 November 1919.   Checking the history, the birth year was changed from 1922 to 1921 on 2 January 2006.   It was changed back because "Imdb says 1922".   IMDB currently says he was born on 29 November 1919.   On 27 June 2006 in Wikipedia the age at which he began publishing was given as 17, probably by comparing the year he started with the year the article said he was born.   On 30 March 2007 the birth date was given as 4 July 1941 in the infobox, changed to 29 November 1922 one minute later.   On 19 October 2008 an IP added the statement that Weider died on 17 October.   It was removed, apparently by the same person, three minutes later.   Later that morning an IP claimed he died on 18 October 1998, reverted one minute later.   That evening an IP claimed he died in a Montreal hospital on 17 October 2008, a claim which lasted four minutes.   The claim resurfaced and disappeared twice on 20 October.   The claim was good faith, but it related to his brother Ben, who was born on 1 February 1923.   On 22 October the birth year was "corrected" to 1920 and his current age was entered as as "96".   The quoted source for this does not bear this out - it's Weider himself  and he says:

"In 1916 my older brother Louis was born ... Next I came along, but I can't tell you when I was born, because nobody could tell me. My birthday was said to be November 29, which is when I celebrate it, but nobody knows for sure.   Ma had a rough idea, remembering that I was born just before Hannukah.   Nothing was on paper, though, because the rabbi's records burned in a fire and we never found government documentation.   I'm not sure of the year, either ... Every three years another child was born into our family - Louis, me, Ben, and Freda."

Ben Weider was born on 1 February 1923. The dates of the first day of Chanucah (same daylight period) are:
 * 20 December 1916
 * 10 December 1917
 * 29 November 1918
 * 17 December 1919
 * 6 December 1920
 * 26 December 1921
 * 15 December 1922
 * 3 December 1923

On 27 May 2009 the year of Weider's entry into publishing was changed from 1939 to 1937. On 12 June the same editor pushed it back to 1936 and changed the year of birth to 1919. For some reason this pushed the autogenerated current age from 96 to 97. On 13 September 2010 the year of birth was changed to 1922, quickly reverted by another editor with the perspicacious edit summary Couldn't have been born on that date in 1922, since his brother was born 4 months later. On 20 October the birth year was changed to 1923 then 1922 and changed back for the same reason.

On 3 June 2011 an IP claimed Weider entered publishing in 1940, still at the age of seventeen. This was changed back to 1936 on 19 July. On 26 December 2012 the birth year was changed to 1922, which resulted (on 17 January 2013) in his age on entering publishing being reduced to 14. On 24 January 2013 his birth year was changed to 1920 (because his website says that). On 2 March 2013 his nephew came on, confirming he entered publishing in 1940. He didn't change the age, implying his uncle was born in 1926. So on 9 March "1940" was changed back to "1936", and then Weider died. This resulted in the age changing from 96 to 92. This was noted in the article on 23 March. On 24 March the birth year was changed to 1919 and a source was quoted. Later on 24 March the age was changed to 94 and reverted. On 29 November 2013 the age of entering publishing was changed to 17, no doubt mechanically by subtracting 1919 from 1936. On 17 June 2014 the birth year was boldly changed to 1920, with the edit summary caveat that Welder was lying about his age. As a consequence, on 6 September the age at death was changed to 92. On 15 January 2016 an editor picked up the discrepancy, changing "in 1936 when he was 17 years old" to "as a teenager in 1936". On 7 April 2016 the 1940 date of entering publishing was restored with a reference. On 10 June 2016 the birthday was changed to 11 November. On 28 October it was changed back. On 16 August this year the birth year was corrected to 1919.