## Facts

- General Motors offered a limited-time cash rebate program for certain new vehicle purchases, funded in part by GM and in part by participating dealerships.
- Christy Pontiac–GMC, Inc., an automobile dealership, participated in the program.
- Customers James Linden and Ronald Gores each purchased new GM vehicles from the dealership and were told the rebate program had ended, making them ineligible.
- After the sales, dealership employee Phil Hesli (salesman and fleet manager) forged Linden’s and Gores’s signatures on rebate applications and backdated documents so the transactions appeared to qualify.
- The rebate funds were directed to the dealership rather than to Linden or Gores.
- Evidence tied the transactions to corporate authority and management involvement:
  - Hesli had responsibility and authority regarding new car sales and processing/signing rebate applications.
  - Another salesman referred Gores’s rebate inquiry to Hesli, indicating Hesli’s recognized role for rebate matters.
  - A corporate officer signed a backdated buyer’s order form connected to the Linden transaction.
  - After Gores discovered the forgery, the dealership’s owner attempted to negotiate a settlement.

## Issues

1. Whether a corporation may be prosecuted and convicted of specific intent crimes, including theft by swindle and aggravated forgery.
2. Whether the evidence was sufficient to attribute Hesli’s forging and backdating conduct to the corporation for purposes of criminal liability.

## Decision

- The Minnesota Supreme Court affirmed the corporate convictions for two counts of theft by swindle and two counts of aggravated forgery.
- The court held that a corporation can be convicted of specific intent crimes.
- The court held the evidence sufficient to treat Hesli’s conduct as the corporation’s conduct under the governing standard for corporate criminal liability.
- The court rejected the argument that Hesli’s acquittal on most parallel charges required reversal of the corporation’s convictions.

## Legal Principles

- A corporation may be criminally liable for specific intent offenses; the requisite mental state may be imputed through its agents.
- Corporate liability for an agent’s specific intent crime is supported when:
  - the agent acted within the course and scope of employment with authority over the corporate business conducted criminally;
  - the agent acted, at least in part, to further the corporation’s business interests; and
  - corporate management authorized, tolerated, or ratified the criminal conduct.
- An agent’s acquittal on related charges does not, by itself, preclude corporate conviction where the evidence independently supports corporate liability.

## Conclusion

The court sustained convictions against an automobile dealership for theft by swindle and aggravated forgery, holding that corporations may commit specific intent crimes through authorized agents and may be liable where the agent acted within assigned authority, furthered corporate interests, and management authorized, tolerated, or ratified the conduct.


State v. Christy Pontiac-GMC, Inc., 354 N.W.2d 17 (Minn. 1984)