As I discussed briefly last week, I think reverse veil piercing in the Hobby Lobby case is a bad idea, in part because it uses a doctrine designed to prevent fraud to impute characteristics to the entity. One of the reasons this concerns me is that there are other recent decisions that imply courts may be missing the point about the separate and distinctive nature of entities, even as the individual rights of entities appear to be expanding. 

In a recent West Virginia case, for example, a lower court allowed a wildly improper use of the statutory provision, “Unknown claims against dissolved corporation” to be the basis what became a $25 million jury award for punitive damages for emotional impact to a former entity’s shareholders. In the Order Addressing AIG Posttrial Motions (pdf) of May 1, 2012 (“Order”) Ryan Environmental, Inc. v. Hess Oil Co., Inc., Civil Action No. 10-C-20, the court adopted a plaintiff’s argument that, under W. Va. Code § 31D-14-1407(d), “the interests of the shareholders are joined with the interests of the corporation after a corporation’s dissolution.” See Order at 7.  The court later explained its view that, because the plaintiff’s former entity was dissolved, damages and hardships attributable to the shareholders were a sufficient basis for the defendants’ liability directly to the shareholders and that such damages and hardships did not need to attributed to the former entity.  That is, the defendants’ liability ran to the entity’s shareholders post-dissolution even though the harms claimed were never attributable to the entity.  Click below to read more.