Agora Nomic used to have a judicial decision (CFJ 805) that the word "person" in the rules refers only to natural persons (i.e., humans). In 2003 the rules were changed, incorporating a provision that "any term primarily used in mathematical or legal contexts ... shall be interpreted as having the meaning it has in those contexts", which in 2007 was argued to render the prior judgement inapplicable and allow for legal persons. Eventually it was ruled that the new rule was unclear about how to interpret the word "person", and a new judgement (CFJ 1623) was handed down that, on the basis of game custom, personhood was not limited to humans but instead available to "anything capable of communicating by email in English". A proposal to explicitly restrict personhood to humans (proposal 4913) was defeated by the voters.
The Pineapple Partnership is a contractual arrangement, originally between Agora players Goethe and Zefram, constructed under Agoran contract law. With the aforementioned judgement liberalising personhood, the Pineapple Partnership qualified as a person and so was able to register as a player. It now takes an active role in Agora, voting on proposals and judging CFJs.
However, the above narrative is not strictly in chronological order.
The issue of legal personhood was first raised on 2007-02-26, when Zefram revealed the Pineapple Partnership's existence to Agora at large and claimed to register it as a player. The Pineapple Partnership also in the same message claimed to call for judgement on the statement "the Pineapple Partnership is a person". Calling for judgement, like registering as a player, is restricted by the rules to persons. The initial reaction from the other players was that the Pineapple Partnership was not a person, so both the registration as a player and the call for judgement were considered invalid.
Due to the uncertainty over whether the PP's CFJ was valid, player Murphy soon (on 2007-02-27) called for judgement on the same statement ("the Pineapple Partnership is a person"). E barred Goethe and Zefram from judging this. Murphy also on 2007-02-27 submitted a proposal that would explicitly define "person" to mean "natural person". Play was slow, with several officers not doing their jobs promptly, so there things rested for a couple of weeks.
On 2007-03-07, Goethe made use of a rule that allowed any player to do an official job on behalf of a tardy officer. E used this facility to assign the Pineapple Partnership's CFJ (of disputed validity) to emself.
On 2007-03-11, Murphy's proposal, which would make the Pineapple Partnership definitively a non-person, was distributed as proposal 4913, commencing its one week voting period. The Pineapple Partnership claimed to vote AGAINST it; this was the PP's first ever vote. (The PP had had the opportunity to vote on a prior batch of two proposals, but Goethe and Zefram couldn't agree on which way it should vote.)
On 2007-03-13, Goethe rendered eir judgement on the PP's CFJ, judging TRUE (that the PP was a person).
On 2007-03-16, with Clerk of the Courts Cecilius still delinquent in eir duties, the process was begun to transfer the office to someone else. Murphy, who had operated the CFJ database in any case, published Goethe's judgement of the PP's CFJ, numbering it CFJ 1622. E also published Murphy's CFJ on the same statement, still unassigned, numbering it CFJ 1623.
On 2007-03-21 the result of proposal 4913 was announced. It would require a 2/3 supermajority to pass. By this time, with a judgement (albeit of disputed validity) that the Pineapple Partnership was a person, the PP's vote was tentatively counted. There were four votes FOR and three votes AGAINST, so the proposal failed. With one fewer vote AGAINST (say, if the PP were not a person and hence not eligible to vote), it would have passed. Curiously, neither Goethe nor Zefram voted AGAINST: Goethe didn't vote, and Zefram voted FOR. The partners could have forced the proposal to fail by a much larger margin, and without any uncertainty, had they wished to.
On 2007-03-22, delinquent Clerk of the Courts Cecilius finally deregistered, citing pressures of RealLife. The following day, the office of Clerk of the Courts passed to the only volunteer: Goethe. Among other inherited overdue duties, e was obliged to assign Murphy's CFJ 1623, on the personhood of the Pineapple Partnership, to a trial judge. Recall that both Goethe and Zefram were barred from judging this CFJ. Goethe duly assigned it to the Pineapple Partnership.
On 2007-03-27, the Pineapple Partnership delivered a judgement on CFJ 1623. It opted not to just refer to the previous CFJ 1622 (judged by Goethe), due to the epistemological difficulty with that (having been called by the PP). Instead, in a judgement of over a thousand words, the PP analysed the issue anew from every angle that had been informally discussed. The judgement was ultimately TRUE, which was consistent with the judgement of CFJ 1622 and also affirmed the validity of the calling of CFJ 1622 and the judgement of CFJ 1623. The judgement was actually drafted by Zefram, but only after Goethe insisted on a de novo judgement.
So by 2007-04 the Pineapple Partnership was firmly established as a legitimate person and player of Agora Nomic. Or so it would have you believe.
Goethe left the game in 2007-05, but the Pineapple Partnership claimed to have changed partners. Agora thus faced the question of whether a partnership that changes partners remains the same person. Ultimately it was ruled that it does, so the Pineapple Partnership lived on.
In 2007-06 there was a third CFJ on "the Pineapple Partnership is a person", CFJ 1684. This was called by a human and judged by a human, so its judgement is more epistemologically well-founded than those of CFJs 1622 and 1623. The judge unexpectedly judged it FALSE. With several other partnerships having been formed and taken an active role in the game, this was quite disruptive. The judgement was quickly appealed, and was mostly ignored in the interim, in the widespread expectation that it would be overturned on appeal.
Immediately after the judgement of CFJ 1684 was rendered, yet another player CFJed (CFJ 1691) on "the Pineapple Partnership is a person", the fourth CFJ with this statement. This was due to a recent rule change, subsequent to the calling of CFJ 1684, which made explicit mention of partnerships. It was argued that even if the PP were not a person at the time CFJ 1684 was called, it might now be a person due to the new rule. This CFJ was judged TRUE.
In 2007-07, another rule change explicitly granted personhood to partnerships of two or more persons. Meanwhile the appeal of CFJ 1684 dragged on, because the courts had stalled. The office of Clerk of the Courts had changed hands again, and the new CotC had difficulty performing eir duties due to the CFJ database going intermittently offline. An attempt was made to install Murphy as CotC, but due to some separation-of-powers legislation this would be valid if only if partnerships had worked all along: that is, the identity of the CotC now depended on the ultimate outcome of CFJ 1684. This was eventually resolved by a proposal to install Zefram as CotC. Due to an uncooperative player the voting on the proposal also depended on the ultimate outcome of CFJ 1684, but installation by other means was possible (and done) in the situation where the proposal's adoption was in doubt.
Due to rules constraining the assignment of judges to appeal hearings, one of the appeal judges for CFJ 1684 had to be HumanPointTwo, another partnership, if and only if partnerships had worked all along. A different appeal board had to be assigned otherwise. All appeal activity was tracked for both scenarios, which were by general cooperation kept as similar as possible. Ultimately, at the beginning of 2007-08 both putative appeal boards issued a ruling, drafted by Murphy, that comprehensively reexamined the issue and reversed the original judgement of CFJ 1684. So it was finally determined, in an epistemologically well-founded fashion, that partnerships had, after all, worked all along. An oddity is that Human Point Two now definitively was part of the appeal board that ruled on its own personhood.