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of directors. Because direct liability for the parent's operation of the facility must be kept distinct from derivative liability for the subsidiary's operation of the facility, the analysis should instead have focused on the relationship between CPC and the facility itself, i. e., on whether CPC "operated" the facility, as evidenced by its direct participation in the facility's activities. That error was compounded by the District Court's erroneous assumption that actions of the joint officers and directors were necessarily attributable to CPC, rather than Ott II, contrary to time-honored common-law principles. The District Court's focus on the relationship between parent and subsidiary (rather than parent and facility), combined with its automatic attribution of the actions of dual officers and directors to CPC, erroneously, even if unintentionally, treated CERCLA as though it displaced or fundamentally altered common-law standards of limited liability. The District Court's analysis created what is in essence a relaxed, CERCLA-specific rule of derivative liability that would banish traditional standards and expectations from the law of CERCLA liability. Such a rule does not arise from congressional silence, and CERCLA's silence is dispositive. Pp. 67-70.
(c) Nonetheless, the Sixth Circuit erred in limiting direct liability under CERCLA to a parent's sole or joint venture operation, so as to eliminate any possible finding that CPC is liable as an operator on the facts of this case. The ordinary meaning of the word "operate" in the organizational sense is not limited to those two parental actions, but extends also to situations in which, e. g., joint officers or directors conduct the affairs of the facility on behalf of the parent, or agents of the parent with no position in the subsidiary manage or direct activities at the subsidiary's facility. Norms of corporate behavior (undisturbed by any CERCLA provision) are crucial reference points, both for determining whether a dual officer or director has served the parent in conducting operations at the facility, and for distinguishing a parental officer's oversight of a subsidiary from his control over the operation of the subsidiary's facility. There is, in fact, some evidence that an agent of CPC alone engaged in activities at Ott II's plant that were eccentric under accepted norms of parental oversight of a subsidiary's facility: The District Court's opinion speaks of such an agent who played a conspicuous part in dealing with the toxic risks emanating from the plant's operation. The findings in this regard are enough to raise an issue of CPC's operation of the facility, though this Court draws no ultimate conclusion, leaving the issue for the lower courts to reevaluate and resolve in the first instance. Pp. 70-73.
Assistant Attorney General Schiffer argued the cause for the United States. With her on the briefs were Solicitor General Waxman, Deputy Solicitor General Wallace, Jeffrey P. Minear, Martin W Matzen, Michael J. McNulty, and Evelyn S. Ying. Frank J. Kelley, Attorney General of Michigan, Thomas L. Casey, Solicitor General, and Kathleen L. Cavanaugh and Robert P. Reichel, Assistant Attorneys General, filed a brief for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, respondent under this Court's Rule 12.6, urging reversal.
Kenneth S. Geller argued the cause for respondents.
* A brief of amici curiae urging reversal was filed for the State of Minnesota et al. by Hubert H. Humphrey III, Attorney General of Minnesota, and Jocelyn F. Olson, Paschal Q Nwokocha, and Alan C. Williams, Assistant Attorneys General, and by the Attorneys General for their respective States as follows: Bruce M. Botelho of Alaska, Grant Woods of Arizona, Winston Bryant of Arkansas, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Robert A. Butterworth of Florida, Thurbert E. Baker of Georgia, Margery S. Bronster of Hawaii, Alan G. Lance of Idaho, James E. Ryan of Illinois, Drew Ketterer of Maine, J. Joseph Curran, Jr., of Maryland, Scott Harshbarger of Massachusetts, Joseph P. Mazurek of Montana, Frankie Sue Del Papa of Nevada, Peter Verniero of New Jersey, Tom Udall of New Mexico, Dennis C. Vacco of New York, Michael F. Easley of North Carolina, Hardy Myers of Oregon, Jeffrey B. Pine of Rhode Island, John Knox Walkup of Tennessee, Dan Morales of Texas, Jan Graham of Utah, William H. Sorrell of Vermont, Christine O. Gregoire of Washington, Darrell V. McGraw of West Virginia, James E. Doyle of Wisconsin, and William U. Hill of Wyoming.
The United States brought this action for the costs of cleaning up industrial waste generated by a chemical plant. The issue before us, under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA), 94 Stat. 2767, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 9601 et seq., is whether a parent corporation that actively participated in, and exercised control over, the operations of a subsidiary may, without more, be held liable as an operator of a polluting facility owned or operated by the subsidiary. We answer no, unless the corporate veil may be pierced. But a corporate parent that actively participated in, and exercised control over, the operations of the facility itself may be held directly liable in its own right as an operator of the facility.
Robert L. Graham; for the United States Business & Industrial Council by David G. Palmer; and for the Washington Legal Foundation et al. by Daniel J. Popeo, Paul D. Kamenar, and Thomas R. Mounteer.
sons [may be tagged with] the cost of their actions," S. Rep. No. 96-848, p. 13 (1980).1 The term "person" is defined in CERCLA to include corporations and other business organizations, see 42 U. S. C. § 9601(21), and the term "facility" enjoys a broad and detailed definition as well, see § 9601(9).2 The phrase "owner or operator" is defined only by tautology, however, as "any person owning or operating" a facility, § 9601(20)(A)(ii), and it is this bit of circularity that prompts our review. Cf. Exxon Corp. v. Hunt, supra, at 363 (CERCLA, "unfortunately, is not a model of legislative draftsmanship").
1 "CERCLA ... imposes the costs of the cleanup on those responsible for the contamination." Pennsylvania v. Union Gas Co., 491 U. S. 1, 7 (1989). "The remedy that Congress felt it needed in CERCLA is sweeping: everyone who is potentially responsible for hazardous-waste contamination may be forced to contribute to the costs of cleanup." Id., at 21 (plurality opinion of Brennan, J.).
2 "The term 'facility' means (A) any building, structure, installation, equipment, pipe or pipeline (including any pipe into a sewer or publicly owned treatment works), well, pit, pond, lagoon, impoundment, ditch, landfill, storage container, motor vehicle, rolling stock, or aircraft, or (B) any site or area where a hazardous substance has been deposited, stored, disposed of, or placed, or otherwise come to be located; but does not include any consumer product in consumer use or any vessel."
3 CPC has recently changed its name to Bestfoods. Consistently with the briefs and the opinions below, we use the name CPC herein.
managers of Ott I, including its founder, president, and principal shareholder, Arnold Ott, on board as officers of Ott II. Arnold Ott and several other Ott II officers and directors were also given positions at CPC, and they performed duties for both corporations.
4 The powers and responsibilities of MDNR have since been transferred to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.
5 Cordova/California and MDNR entered into a contract under which Cordova/California agreed to undertake certain cleanup actions, and MDNR agreed to share in the funding of those actions and to indemnify Cordova/California for various expenses. The Michigan Court of Appeals has held that this agreement requires MDNR to indemnify Aerojet and its Cordova subsidiaries for any CERCLA liability that they may incur in connection with their activities at the Muskegon facility. See Cordova Chemical Co. v. MDNR, 212 Mich. App. 144, 536 N. W. 2d 860 (1995), leave to appeal denied, 453 Mich. 901, 554 N. W. 2d 319 (1996).
United States filed this action under § 107 in 1989, naming five defendants as responsible parties: CPC, Aerojet, Cordova/California, Cordova/Michigan, and Arnold Ott.6 (By that time, Ott I and Ott II were defunct.) After the parties (and MDNR) had launched a flurry of contribution claims, counterclaims, and cross-claims, the District Court consolidated the cases for trial in three phases: liability, remedy, and insurance coverage. So far, only the first phase has been completed; in 1991, the District Court held a 15-day bench trial on the issue of liability. Because the parties stipulated that the Muskegon plant was a "facility" within the meaning of 42 U. S. C. § 9601(9), that hazardous substances had been released at the facility, and that the United States had incurred reimbursable response costs to clean up the site, the trial focused on the issues of whether CPC and Aerojet, as the parent corporations of Ott II and the Cordova companies, had "owned or operated" the facility within the meaning of § 107(a)(2).
6 Arnold Ott settled out of court with the Government on the eve of trial.
during a period of disposal of hazardous waste. A parent's actual participation in and control over a subsidiary's functions and decision-making creates 'operator' liability under CERCLA; a parent's mere oversight of a subsidiary's business in a manner appropriate and consistent with the investment relationship between a parent and its wholly owned subsidiary does not." Ibid.
Applying that test to the facts of this case, the District Court held both CPC and Aerojet liable under § 107(a)(2) as operators. As to CPC, the court found it particularly telling that CPC selected Ott II's board of directors and populated its executive ranks with CPC officials, and that a CPC official, G. R. D. Williams, played a significant role in shaping Ott II's environmental compliance policy.
upon whether the degree to which it controls its subsidiary and the extent and manner of its involvement with the facility, amount to the abuse of the corporate form that will warrant piercing the corporate veil and disregarding the separate corporate entities of the parent and subsidiary." Id., at 580.
Applying Michigan veil-piercing law, the Court of Appeals decided that neither CPC nor Aerojet 7 was liable for controlling the actions of its subsidiaries, since the parent and subsidiary corporations maintained separate personalities and the parents did not utilize the subsidiary corporate form to perpetrate fraud or subvert justice.
We granted certiorari, 522 U. S. 1024 (1997), to resolve a conflict among the Circuits over the extent to which parent corporations may be held liable under CERCLA for operating facilities ostensibly under the control of their subsidiaries.8 We now vacate and remand.
7Unlike CPC, Aerojet does not base its defense in this Court on a claim that, absent unusual circumstances, a parent company can be held liable as an operator of a facility only by piercing the corporate veil. Rather, Aerojet denies liability by claiming that (1) neither it nor its subsidiaries disposed of hazardous substances during their operation of the facility, see Brief for Respondents Aerojet-General Corp. et al. 27-36, and (2) it is entitled to a third-party defense under § 107(b)(3) of CERCLA, 42 U. S. C. § 9607(b)(3), see Brief for Respondents Aerojet-General Corp. et al. 38-46. The Court of Appeals expressed some measure of agreement with Aerojet on these points and instructed the District Court to consider them on remand. See 113 F. 3d, at 577, 583. These issues are not before this Court.
(CA1 1990) (parent actively involved in the affairs of its subsidiary may be held directly liable as an operator of the facility, regardless of whether the corporate veil can be pierced), cert. denied, 498 U. S. 1084 (1991), Schiavone v. Pearce, 79 F.3d 248, 254-255 (CA2 1996) (same), LansfordCoaldale Joint Water Auth. v. Tonolli Corp., 4 F.3d 1209, 1220-1225 (CA3 1993) (same), Jacksonville Elec. Auth. v. Bernuth Corp., 996 F.2d 1107, 1110 (CAll 1993) (same), and Nurad, Inc. v. William E. Hooper & Sons Co., 966 F.2d 837, 842 (CA4) (parent having authority to control subsidiary is liable as an operator, even if it did not exercise that authority), cert. denied, 506 U. S. 940 (1992).
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 stockholders. Nor will a duplication of some or all of the directors 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 Corporations 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 commonlaw backdrop, the congressional silence is audible. Cf. Edmonds v. Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, 443 U. S. 256, 266-267 (1979) ("[S]ilence is most eloquent, for such reticence 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 subsidiary is subject to liability for owning or operating a polluting facility.
(Mass. 1987) (noting that, since "federal common law draws upon state law for guidance, ... the choice between state and federal [veil-piercing law] may in many cases present questions of academic interest, but little practical significance"). But cf. Note, Piercing the Corporate Law Veil: The Alter Ego Doctrine Under Federal Common Law, 95 Harv. L. Rev. 853 (1982) (arguing that federal common law need not mirror state law, because "federal common law should look to federal statutory policy rather than to state corporate law when deciding whether to pierce the corporate veil"). Since none of the parties challenges the Sixth Circuit's holding that CPC and Aerojet incurred no derivative liability, the question is not presented in this case, and we do not address it further.
10 Some courts and commentators have suggested that this indirect, veil-piercing approach can subject a parent corporation to liability only as an owner, and not as an operator. See, e. g., Lansford-Coaldale Joint Water Auth. v. Tonolli Corp., supra, at 1220; Oswald, Bifurcation of the Owner and Operator Analysis under CERCLA, 72 Wash. U. L. Q. 223, 281282 (1994) (hereinafter Oswald). We think it is otherwise, however. If a subsidiary that operates, but does not own, a facility is so pervasively controlled by its parent for a sufficiently improper purpose to warrant veil piercing, the parent may be held derivatively liable for the subsidiary's acts as an operator.
11 While this article was written together with Professor Shanks, the passages quoted in this opinion were written solely by Justice Douglas. See Douglas 193, n. *.
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 polluting facility operated by its parent does nothing, then, to displace the rule that the parent "corporation is [itself] responsible 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. Pipe fitters 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.
12 See Oswald 257 ("There are ... instances ... in which the parent has not sufficiently overstepped the bounds of corporate separateness to warrant piercing, yet is involved enough in the facility's activities that it should be held liable as an operator. Imagine, for example, a parent who strictly observed corporate formalities, avoided intertwining officers and directors, and adequately capitalized its subsidiary, yet provided active, daily supervision and control over hazardous waste disposal activities of the subsidiary. Such a parent should not escape liability just because its activities do not justify a piercing of the subsidiary's veil").
to do with the leakage or disposal of hazardous waste, or decisions about compliance with environmental regulations.
With this understanding, we are satisfied that the Court of Appeals correctly rejected the District Court's analysis of direct liability. But we also think that the appeals court erred in limiting direct liability under the statute to a parent's sole or joint venture operation, so as to eliminate any possible finding that CPC is liable as an operator on the facts of this case.
By emphasizing that "CPC is directly liable under section 107(a)(2) as an operator because CPC actively participated in and exerted significant control over Ott II's business and decision-making," 777 F. Supp., at 574, the District Court applied the "actual control" test of whether the parent "actually operated the business of its subsidiary," id., at 573, as several Circuits have employed it, see, e. g., United States v. Kayser-Roth Corp., supra, at 27 (operator liability "requires active involvement in the affairs of the subsidiary"); Jacksonville Elec. Auth. v. Bernuth Corp., 996 F.2d 1107, 1110 (CAll 1993) (parent is liable if it "actually exercised control over, or was otherwise intimately involved in the operations of, the [subsidiary] corporation immediately responsible for the operation of the facility" (internal quotation marks omitted)).
necessarily be different under the two tests. "The question is not whether the parent operates the subsidiary, but rather whether it operates the facility, and that operation is evidenced by participation in the activities of the facility, not the subsidiary. Control of the subsidiary, if extensive enough, gives rise to indirect liability under piercing doctrine, not direct liability under the statutory language." Oswald 269; see also Schiavone v. Pearce, 79 F.3d 248, 254 (CA2 1996) ("Any liabilities [the parent] may have as an operator, then, stem directly from its control over the plant"). The District Court was therefore mistaken to rest its analysis on CPC's relationship with Ott II, premising liability on little more than "CPC's 100-percent ownership of Ott II" and "CPC's active participation in, and at times majority control over, Ott II's board of directors." 777 F. Supp., at 575. The analysis should instead have rested on the relationship between CPC and the Muskegon facility itself.
executive officer," and on "the conduct of CPC officials with respect to Ott II affairs, particularly Arnold Ott"); id., at 558 ("CPC actively participated in, and at times controlled, the policy-making decisions of its subsidiary through its representation on the Ott II board of directors"); id., at 559 ("CPC also actively participated in and exerted control over dayto-day decision-making at Ott II through representation in the highest levels of the subsidiary's management").
In imposing direct liability on these grounds, the District Court failed to recognize that "it is entirely appropriate for directors of a parent corporation to serve as directors of its subsidiary, and that fact alone may not serve to expose the parent corporation to liability for its subsidiary's acts." American Protein Corp. v. AB Volvo, 844 F.2d 56, 57 (CA2), cert. denied, 488 U. S. 852 (1988); see also Kingston Dry Dock Co. v. Lake Champlain Transp. Co., 31 F.2d 265, 267 (CA2 1929) (L. Hand, J.) ("Control through the ownership of shares does not fuse the corporations, even when the directors are common to each"); Henn & Alexander 355 (noting that it is "normal" for a parent and subsidiary to "have identical directors and officers").
here that dual officers and directors made policy decisions and supervised activities at the facility. The Government would have to show that, despite the general presumption to the contrary, the officers and directors were acting in their capacities as CPC officers and directors, and not as Ott II officers and directors, when they committed those acts.13 The District Court made no such enquiry here, however, disregarding entirely this time-honored common-law rule.
In sum, the District Court's focus on the relationship between parent and subsidiary (rather than parent and facility), combined with its automatic attribution of the actions of dual officers and directors to the corporate parent, erroneously, even if unintentionally, treated CERCLA as though it displaced or fundamentally altered common-law standards of limited liability. Indeed, if the evidence of common corporate personnel acting at management and directorial levels were enough to support a finding of a parent corporation's direct operator liability under CERCLA, then the possibility of resort to veil piercing to establish indirect, derivative liability for the subsidiary's violations would be academic. There would in essence be a relaxed, CERCLA-specific rule of derivative liability that would banish traditional standards and expectations from the law of CERCLA liability. But, as we have said, such a rule does not arise from congressional silence, and CERCLA's silence is dispositive.
13 We do not attempt to recite the ways in which the Government could show that dual officers or directors were in fact acting on behalf of the parent. Here, it is prudent to say only that the presumption that an act is taken on behalf of the corporation for whom the officer claims to act is strongest when the act is perfectly consistent with the norms of corporate behavior, but wanes as the distance from those accepted norms approaches the point of action by a dual officer plainly contrary to the interests of the subsidiary yet nonetheless advantageous to the parent.
sion over the subsidiary, especially one that assumes that dual officers always act on behalf of the parent, cannot be used to identify operation of a facility resulting in direct parental liability. Nonetheless, a return to the ordinary meaning of the word "operate" in the organizational sense will indicate why we think that the Sixth Circuit stopped short when it confined its examples of direct parental operation to exclusive or joint ventures, and declined to find at least the possibility of direct operation by CPC in this case.
In our enquiry into the meaning Congress presumably had in mind when it used the verb "to operate," we recognized that the statute obviously meant something more than mere mechanical activation of pumps and valves, and must be read to contemplate "operation" as including the exercise of direction over the facility's activities. See supra, at 66-67. The Court of Appeals recognized this by indicating that a parent can be held directly liable when the parent operates the facility in the stead of its subsidiary or alongside the subsidiary in some sort of a joint venture. See 113 F. 3d, at 579. We anticipated a further possibility above, however, when we observed that a dual officer or director might depart so far from the norms of parental influence exercised through dual officeholding as to serve the parent, even when ostensibly acting on behalf of the subsidiary in operating the facility. See n. 13, supra. Yet another possibility, suggested by the facts of this case, is that an agent of the parent with no hat to wear but the parent's hat might manage or direct activities at the facility.
holder acts in his ostensible capacity, so here we may refer to them in distinguishing a parental officer's oversight of a subsidiary from such an officer's control over the operation of the subsidiary's facility. "[A]ctivities that involve the facility but which are consistent with the parent's investor status, such as monitoring of the subsidiary's performance, supervision of the subsidiary's finance and capital budget decisions, and articulation of general policies and procedures, should not give rise to direct liability." Oswald 282. The critical question is whether, in degree and detail, actions directed to the facility by an agent of the parent alone are eccentric under accepted norms of parental oversight of a subsidiary's facility.
There is, in fact, some evidence that CPC engaged in just this type and degree of activity at the Muskegon plant. The District Court's opinion speaks of an agent of CPC alone who played a conspicuous part in dealing with the toxic risks emanating from the operation of the plant. G. R. D. Williams worked only for CPC; he was not an employee, officer, or director of Ott II, see Tr. of Oral Arg. 7, and thus, his actions were of necessity taken only on behalf of CPC. The District Court found that "CPC became directly involved in environmental and regulatory matters through the work of ... Williams, CPC's governmental and environmental affairs director. Williams ... became heavily involved in environmental issues at Ott II." 777 F. Supp., at 561. He "actively participated in and exerted control over a variety of Ott II environmental matters," ibid., and he "issued directives regarding Ott II's responses to regulatory inquiries," id., at 575.
14 There are some passages in the District Court's opinion that might suggest that, without reference to Williams, some of Ott II's actions in operating the facility were in fact dictated by, and thus taken on behalf of, CPC. See, e. g., 777 F. Supp., at 561 ("CPC officials engaged in ... missions to Ott II in which Ott II officials received instructions on how to improve and change"); id., at 559 ("CPC executives who were not Ott II board members also occasionally attended Ott II board meetings"). But nothing in the District Court's findings of fact, as written, even comes close to overcoming the presumption that Ott II officials made their decisions and performed their acts as agents of Ott II. Indeed, the finding that "Ott II corporate officers set the day-to-day operating policies for the company without any need to obtain formal approval from CPC," ibid., indicates just the opposite. Still, the Government is, of course, free on remand to point to any additional evidence, not cited by the District Court, that would tend to establish that Ott II's decisionmakers acted on specific orders from CPC.

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