Your team is ahead but makes a crucial error and loses the game. You may be tempted to vent your frustration on the cable box. Before you do, you should stop and consider Section 14400 of the California Corporations Code. That section allows a cable television corporation to recover treble damages from anyone who willfully and maliciously does any injury to its property.

The statute raises some interesting questions. Why did the legislature see fit to protect the property of cable television corporations but not satellite television corporations? Why aren’t other types of business entities such as limited liability companies given the same right? What is this section doing in the Corporations Code anyway?