Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 110

524US1

Unit: $U74

[09-06-00 17:54:15] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 524 U. S. 51 (1998)

65

Opinion of the Court

In such instances, the parent is directly liable for its own
actions. See H. Henn & J. Alexander, Laws of Corporations
347 (3d ed. 1983) (hereinafter Henn & Alexander) (“Apart
from corporation law principles, a shareholder, whether a
natural person or a corporation, may be liable on the ground
that such shareholder’s activity resulted in the liability”).
The fact that a corporate subsidiary happens to own a pollut-
ing facility operated by its parent does nothing, then, to dis-
place the rule that the parent “corporation is [itself] respon-
sible for the wrongs committed by its agents in the course of
its business,” Mine Workers v. Coronado Coal Co., 259 U. S.
344, 395 (1922), and whereas the rules of veil piercing limit
derivative liability for the actions of another corporation,
CERCLA’s “operator” provision is concerned primarily with
direct liability for one’s own actions. See, e. g., Sidney
S. Arst Co. v. Pipeﬁtters Welfare Ed. Fund, 25 F. 3d 417,
420 (CA7 1994) (“[T]he direct, personal liability provided by
CERCLA is distinct from the derivative liability that results
from piercing the corporate veil” (internal quotation marks
omitted)).
It is this direct liability that is properly seen as
being at issue here.

Under the plain language of the statute, any person who
operates a polluting facility is directly liable for the costs of
cleaning up the pollution. See 42 U. S. C. § 9607(a)(2). This
is so regardless of whether that person is the facility’s owner,
the owner’s parent corporation or business partner, or even
a saboteur who sneaks into the facility at night to discharge
If any such act of operating a cor-
its poisons out of malice.
porate subsidiary’s facility is done on behalf of a parent cor-
poration, the existence of the parent-subsidiary relationship
under state corporate law is simply irrelevant to the issue
of direct liability. See Riverside Market Dev. Corp. v. In-
ternational Bldg. Prods., Inc., 931 F. 2d 327, 330 (CA5)
(“CERCLA prevents individuals from hiding behind the cor-
porate shield when, as ‘operators,’ they themselves actually
participate in the wrongful conduct prohibited by the Act”),