A corporation is a legal construct with an identity separate and apart from its

Question

A corporation is a legal construct with an identity separate and apart from its owner(s). The primary legal advantage to converting one’s business from an unincorporated enterprise to the corporate form is the ability to avoid personal liability for the business’s financial obligations. Since the corporation is distinguishable from its owner, the owner’s personal assets cannot be seized to satisfy business indebtedness. This effectively means that an owner can “crash and burn” a corporation financially, bankrupt the business, and walk away from the “flaming wreckage” of the corporation without personal obligation for business debts. Is it ethical for an owner to use the corporate entity to avoid personal obligation for business debts?

Explanation / Answer

No, it is not ethical as per Law of corporate veil for an owner to use the corporate entity to avoid personal obligation for business debts.

Corporate veil piercing is the most litigated issue in corporate law. Although courts are reluctant to hold an active shareholder liable for actions that are legally the responsibility of the corporation, even if the corporation has a single shareholder, they will often do so if the corporation was markedly noncompliant, or if holding only the corporation liable would be singularly unfair to the plaintiff. In most jurisdictions, no bright-line rule exists and the ruling is based on common law precedents. In the United States, different theories, most important "alter ego" or "instrumentality rule", attempted to create a piercing standard. Mostly, they rest upon three basic prongs—namely "unity of interest and ownership", "wrongful conduct" and "proximate cause". However, the theories failed to articulate a real-world approach which courts could directly apply to their cases. Thus, courts struggle with the proof of each prong and rather analyze all given factors. This is known as "totality of circumstances".

There is also the matter of what jurisdiction the corporation is incorporated in if the corporation is authorized to do business in more than one state. All corporations have one specific state (their "home" state) to which they are incorporated as a "domestic" corporation, and if they operate in other states, they would apply for authority to do business in those other states as a "foreign" corporation. In determining whether or not the corporate veil may be pierced, the courts are required to use the laws of the corporation's home state. This issue can be significant; for example, the rules for allowing a corporate veil to be pierced are much more liberal in California than they are in Nevada. Thus, the owner(s) of a corporation operating in California would be subject to different potential for the corporation's veil to be pierced if the corporation was to be sued, depending on whether the corporation was a California domestic corporation or was a Nevada foreign corporation operating in California.

Generally, the plaintiff has to prove that the incorporation was merely a formality and that the corporation neglected corporate formalities and protocols, such as voting to approve major corporate actions in the context of a duly authorized corporate meeting. This is quite often the case when a corporation facing legal liability transfers its assets and business to another corporation with the same management and shareholders. It also happens with single person corporations that are managed in a haphazard manner. As such, the veil can be pierced in both civil cases and where regulatory proceedings are taken against a shell corporation.

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