Limited liability companies (LLCs) are often viewed as some sort of a modified corporation. This is wrong, as LLCs are unique entities (as are, for example, limited partnerships), but that has not stopped lawyers and courts, including this nation's highest court, from conflating LLCs and corporations.
About four and a half years ago, in a short Harvard Business Law Review Online article, I focused on this oddity, noting that many courts
seem to view LLCs as close cousins to corporations, and many even appear to view LLCs as subset or specialized types of corporations. A May 2011 search of Westlaw’s “ALLCASES” database provides 2,773 documents with the phrase “limited liability corporation,” yet most (if not all) such cases were actually referring to LLCs—limited liability companies. As such, it is not surprising that courts have often failed to treat LLCs as alternative entities unto themselves. It may be that some courts didn’t even appreciate that fact. (footnotes omitted).
I have been writing about this subject again recently, so I decided to revisit the question of just how many courts call LLCs “limited liability corporations” instead of “limited liability companies.” I returned to Westlaw, though this time