Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 107.0

524US1

Unit: $U74

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UNITED STATES v. BESTFOODS

Opinion of the Court

beyond the assets of the subsidiary. That ‘control’ includes
the election of directors, the making of by-laws . . . and the
doing of all other acts incident to the legal status of stock-
holders. Nor will a duplication of some or all of the direc-
tors or executive ofﬁcers be fatal.” Douglas 196 (footnotes
omitted). Although this respect for corporate distinctions
when the subsidiary is a polluter has been severely criticized
in the literature, see, e. g., Note, Liability of Parent Corpora-
tions for Hazardous Waste Cleanup and Damages, 99 Harv.
L. Rev. 986 (1986), nothing in CERCLA purports to reject
this bedrock principle, and against this venerable common-
law backdrop, the congressional silence is audible. Cf. Ed-
monds v. Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, 443 U. S.
256, 266–267 (1979) (“[S]ilence is most eloquent, for such reti-
cence while contemplating an important and controversial
change in existing law is unlikely”). The Government has
indeed made no claim that a corporate parent is liable as an
owner or an operator under § 107 simply because its subsid-
iary is subject to liability for owning or operating a pollut-
ing facility.

But there is an equally fundamental principle of corporate
law, applicable to the parent-subsidiary relationship as well
as generally, that the corporate veil may be pierced and the
shareholder held liable for the corporation’s conduct when,
inter alia, the corporate form would otherwise be misused
to accomplish certain wrongful purposes, most notably fraud,
on the shareholder’s behalf. See, e. g., Anderson v. Abbott,
supra, at 362 (“[T]here are occasions when the limited liabil-
ity sought to be obtained through the corporation will be
qualiﬁed or denied”); Chicago, M. & St. P. R. Co. v. Minneap-
olis Civic and Commerce Assn., 247 U. S. 490, 501 (1918)
(principles of corporate separateness “have been plainly and
repeatedly held not applicable where stock ownership has
been resorted to, not for the purpose of participating in the
affairs of a corporation in the normal and usual manner, but
for the purpose . . . of controlling a subsidiary company so