In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

No. 99-1562

Hardin Roller Corporation,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

Universal Printing Machinery, Inc.,

Defendant,

and

Joseph Yukich,

Defendant-Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Indiana, Hammond Division.

No. 2:95-CV-213-TS--Theresa Springmann, Magistrate Judge.

Argued October 26, 2000--Decided January 3, 2001

 Before Easterbrook, Kanne, and Evans, Circuit Judges.

 Easterbrook, Circuit Judge. Hardin Roller, which

sells large printing presses and related

equipment, is based in Wisconsin. In years past

Hardin Roller hired Universal Printing Machinery,

based in Indiana, to recondition and install some

presses. Joseph Yukich, who owned a majority of

Universal’s stock and also operated a

proprietorship that supplied parts to Universal’s

business, often visited Wisconsin to find

printing gear, negotiate on Universal’s behalf,

and repair or install presses. Relations between

Hardin and Universal soured in 1992, when

Universal demanded additional compensation for

installing a press on Hardin’s behalf in Italy,

then walked off the job (leaving the customer

with an incomplete installation) when Hardin did

not pay. Later that year Hardin and Universal

reached a compromise that was supposed to wrap up

their business relationship: Hardin agreed to

give Universal title to four large presses, and

Universal agreed to pay Hardin $425,000. Yukich

personally disassembled one of the presses in

Wisconsin and had it shipped to Indiana.

Universal soon possessed all four presses. Yukich

then cut communications with Hardin, and
Universal did not keep its part of the bargain.

 A suit ensued in Wisconsin court. Despite

receiving service of process, Yukich did not

answer the complaint. Universal, which did

appear, denied that it was subject to personal

jurisdiction there but otherwise offered no

defense. The Wisconsin court, after concluding

that it had jurisdiction over both Universal and

Yukich, entered judgment in Hardin’s favor.

Universal and Yukich ignored the judgment,

leading Hardin to file an enforcement action in

Indiana, this time in federal court under the

diversity jurisdiction. Both Universal and Yukich

defended on the ground that the Wisconsin court

had lacked jurisdiction--the only available

ground of collateral attack. See Sheet Metal

Workers’ National Pension Fund v. Elite Erectors,

Inc., 212 F.3d 1031 (7th Cir. 2000). A magistrate

judge, presiding by consent under 28 U.S.C.

sec.636(c), soon held that the Wisconsin court’s

determination that it had jurisdiction over

Universal is entitled to full faith and credit.

But Yukich, who had disdained the Wisconsin

litigation, remained free to contest that court’s

decision. Three years of discovery and motions

practice followed. Eventually the magistrate

judge granted summary judgment in Hardin’s favor,

ruling that Yukich’s business visits to

Wisconsin, and his economic activities with

predictable consequences, had subjected him to

jurisdiction under the terms of Wisconsin’s longarm statute, Wis. Stat. sec.801.05. Application

of this statute, the magistrate judge held, is

consistent with the due process clause of the

fourteenth amendment. A final judgment entered in

1999 obliged both Universal and Yukich to pay the

Wisconsin judgment, plus interest that has been

accruing since 1995. Yukich has appealed;

Universal has not.

 Yukich’s lead argument--that he lacked

sufficient contacts with Wisconsin to support

jurisdiction under either state law or the

federal Constitution--is feeble. We have recited

undisputed facts; Yukich insists that some

circumstances surrounding his business in

Wisconsin are in dispute, but the visits

themselves are established. What is more, Yukich

rather than Hardin bears the burden of

persuasion, because it is Yukich who wants

collateral relief from a presumptively valid

judgment. Yukich proceeds on appeal as if

jurisdiction depended on the single message from

Italy (and the Italian customer’s decision not to

pay Hardin until the work had been completed).

But it does not. Yukich often visited Wisconsin,

not only to carry on Universal’s business but

also to conduct his own affairs as the proprietor

of a used-parts business. He communicated to
Wisconsin when he was not there physically. He

sent remittances to, and received payments from,

Hardin in Wisconsin. As part of the 1992

settlement, Yukich personally disassembled a

printing press in Wisconsin and had it shipped to

Indiana, then reneged on the bargain once he had

its benefits. Wisconsin is no less appropriate a

forum than Indiana for litigation about the

dealings between Hardin and Yukich, and the due

process clause does not block a state from

adjudicating claims among persons who have had

long-term business relations that occur, in part,

within its borders. Helicopteros Nationales de

Colombia, S.A. v. Hall, 466 U.S. 408 (1984).

Yukich was eager to travel to Wisconsin to make

money; it is equally appropriate that he litigate

in Wisconsin concerning the obligations incurred

during these trips and the associated business

deals.

 As a back-up argument, Yukich contends that the

fiduciary-shield doctrine prevents haling him as

an individual into Wisconsin court, when all his

activities in that state occurred as an agent of

Universal. The fiduciary-shield doctrine makes it

easier for businesses to hire agents, who need

not fear that they put their personal wealth at

stake in every jurisdiction that they visit on

the firm’s behalf. Their wealth still is at stake

if they commit wrongs, but the doctrine offers

the convenience of litigating closer to home.

This way of stating the doctrine’s effect implies

that it was much more important a century ago,

when travel was costly and time-consuming, than

it is today, when cities 1,000 miles away are

almost as easy to reach as cities 200 miles away,

and when a bar with offices (or arrangements with

local counsel) across the country insulates

clients from much concern about the location of

the courthouse.

 Calder v. Jones, 465 U.S. 783, 790 (1984), and

Keeton v. Hustler Magazine, 465 U.S. 770, 781

n.13 (1984), establish that the Constitution does

not shield persons who act as corporate agents

from individual-capacity suits. Thus the

fiduciary-shield doctrine is a matter of state

law only, and many states do not employ it. See

generally Sonja Larsen, Validity, Construction,

and Application of "Fiduciary Shield" Doctrine--

Modern Cases, 79 A.L.R. (5th series) 587 (2000).

Does Wisconsin? Never in that state’s history

have its courts applied the doctrine--but neither

have they definitively rejected the possibility.

See Pavlic v. Woodrum, 169 Wis. 2d 585, 486

N.W.2d 533 (App. 1992). One judge of this court

believes that, when at last it must choose,

Wisconsin will not adopt the doctrine. Steel

Warehouse of Wisconsin, Inc. v. Leach, 154 F.3d

712, 716 n.2 (7th Cir. 1998) (Ripple, J.,
dissenting). But the hour of choice has not

arrived--not only because we are not a Wisconsin

court (by failing to appear in the Wisconsin

suit, Yukich abandoned his opportunity to obtain

a decision by Wisconsin’s judiciary), but also

because Yukich does not meet the requirements of

states that use the doctrine.

 One of the doctrine’s conditions is that the

person’s business in the state be solely as a

fiduciary of another person, who is liable as a

principal. Yukich, however, appeared in Wisconsin

both as Universal’s agent and as principal of his

own proprietorship. Every deal he negotiated in

Wisconsin with Hardin was indirectly a sale of

parts that Yukich supplied as proprietor. Yukich

wore two hats in Wisconsin: as agent of Universal

for remanufacturing and reconditioning presses,

and as proprietor for the sale of parts that

would be used in this process. Yukich filed an

affidavit denying that he sold parts in Wisconsin

in his own name; the wording is clever but avoids

the point that he regularly transacted business

in Wisconsin to advance his personal economic

interest. What is more, Yukich was the principal

owner, and at times the sole employee, of

Universal. He never held in his own name less

than 52% of Universal’s stock; his wife owned a

further 24%. Wisconsin would recognize corporate

independence and not hold Yukich as shareholder

liable for corporate debts; but it would press

corporate form beyond the breaking point to

suppose that Yukich and Universal were different

entities for the purpose of liability on

contracts Yukich personally negotiated or

performed, or business torts Yukich personally

committed.

 To put this otherwise, Universal did not need

to offer Yukich assurance of immunity from

personal liability in other states to get him to

act as its agent; Yukich was Universal for

practical purposes. It was the lure of profit

from the firm’s total operations, not a fixed

salary, that induced Yukich to attend to

Universal’s business. As the principal residual

claimant to Universal’s net income, Yukich did

not need--and we predict that Wisconsin would not

extend--protection from individual-capacity

actions in jurisdictions where Universal itself

was exposed to suit. See In re Mahurkar Double

Lumen Hemodialysis Catheter Patent Litigation,

750 F. Supp. 330 (N.D. Ill. 1990) (Illinois, a

state employing the fiduciary-shield doctrine,

would not use it to protect the principal

investors in closely held corporations). Residual

claimants feel the pinch personally even when the

corporation is the only named party, and the only

function of the fiduciary-shield doctrine for a

residual claimant would be to facilitate evasion
if the corporation should become judgment proof.

 Yukich made this pellucid when he caused

Universal to go out of business in 1996--after

years of ignoring the Wisconsin judgment, and

after this enforcement litigation was under way.

Yukich reaped the benefit of Universal’s

profitable business, caused Universal not to pay

the judgment in Hardin’s favor, took steps making

it unlikely that Universal would be able to

satisfy that judgment, and now wants us to say

that because he acted in Wisconsin as a mere

agent for Universal he, too, may ignore the

Wisconsin judgment. Judgments are not so easily

evaded, or Wisconsin’s courts so easily

bamboozled.

Affirmed