Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 546.0

529US2

Unit: $U49

[10-24-00 10:29:50] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 529 U. S. 460 (2000)

471

Opinion of the Court

OCP’s corporate veil, see id., at 1349, n. 6, and Adams, for
its part, has disavowed reliance on a veil-piercing theory, see
Record, Doc. No. 129, at 3 (stating, before the District Court,
that “Adams does not request that the Court ‘disregard the
corporate form’ ”); Tape of Oral Arg. in No. 98–1448 (CA Fed.
Feb. 3, 1999) (expressly stating that this case does not con-
cern piercing the corporate veil). One-person corporations
are authorized by law and should not lightly be labeled sham.
See, e. g., Gregory v. Helvering, 293 U. S. 465, 469 (1935)
(ﬁnding corporation a sham not because it was owned en-
tirely by one person, but because it had “no business or
corporate purpose”); Kirno Hill Corp. v. Holt, 618 F. 2d
982, 985 (CA2 1980) (a corporation’s veil may not be pierced
merely because it has only one owner).
Indeed, where pat-
ents are concerned, the one-person corporation may be an
altogether appropriate means to permit innovation without
exposing inventors to possibly ruinous consequences. The
legitimacy of OCP as a corporation, in short, is not at issue
in this case.

Instead, the Federal Circuit reasoned that nothing much
turned on whether the party opposing Adams’ claim for
costs and fees was OCP or Nelson.
“[N]o basis has been
advanced,” the panel majority concluded, “to believe any-
thing different or additional would have been done to de-
fend against the allegation of inequitable conduct had Nelson
individually already been added as a party or had he been a
party from the outset.” 175 F. 3d, at 1351. We neither dis-
pute nor endorse the substance of this speculation. We say
instead that judicial predictions about the outcome of hy-
pothesized litigation cannot substitute for the actual oppor-
tunity to defend that due process affords every party against
whom a claim is stated. As Judge Newman wrote in dis-
sent: “The law, at its most fundamental, does not render
judgment simply because a person might have been found
liable had he been charged.”

Id., at 1354.