Opinion ID: 853313
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Roseman as a Responsible Corporate Officer

Text: The Court of Appeals determined that it was unnecessary either to adopt or reject the responsible corporate officer doctrine because the court found the evidence inadequate to establish Roseman as a responsible party under Park, as formulated in Dougherty. RLG, 735 N.E.2d at 299. We disagree. Roseman was the sole shareholder of RLG, Inc., which operated the Spring Valley Landfill. As Indiana corporate law allows in a company with only one shareholder, Roseman was the single director. From RLG's inception in 1988, Roseman served as its only corporate officer, holding the offices of president, secretary, and treasurer. As is typical of a single shareholder corporation, only Roseman appears in the corporate minutes in any capacity. These factors, individually or collectively, are not enough to establish individual liability under the responsible corporate officer doctrine. It is not Roseman's status as officer, director, or sole shareholder of RLG that is determinative under this theory. Each of these in itself may be sufficiently removed from the relevant corporate activities that the individual is not a responsible corporate officer despite high corporate office. Rather it is Roseman's direction of and involvement in operating the landfill, his representation to IDEM that he was the responsible party, and his actual role in the corporation's activities that are critical. Matter of Dougherty, 482 N.W.2d 485, 490 (Minn.Ct.App.1992), formulated the standard of a responsible corporate officer as: (1) the individual must be in a position of responsibility which allows the person to influence corporate policies or activities; (2) there must be a nexus between the individual's position and the violation in question such that the individual could have influenced the corporate actions which constituted the violations; and (3) the individual's actions or inactions facilitated the violations. This is a fair restatement of the responsible corporate officer doctrine as articulated in United States v. Park, 421 U.S. 658, 673-74, 95 S.Ct. 1903, 44 L.Ed.2d 489 (1975). Roseman meets all these criteria. He plainly had a position that allowed him to influence RLG's policies and functions. Indeed, he dominated the corporation. He also designated himself as the responsible party in the solid waste permit application, establishing the necessary nexus between his position and environmental compliance. Finally, his acts facilitated the violation. The facts of this case are analogous to Dougherty, where the Minnesota Court of Appeals based responsible corporate officer liability on findings that the defendant was in a position of responsibility as president and primary emergency coordinator, that the violations were within his sphere of influence, that he was the primary contact with all regulatory bodies concerning hazardous waste, and that he failed to prevent the violations and take proper corrective action once the violations occurred. Dougherty, 482 N.W.2d at 490. Here there is no subordinate or intermediate officer principally responsible for compliance, and Roseman was directly involved in at least some corporate activities. Either may be sufficient, and in concert they demonstrate that Roseman had both the responsibility and authority to prevent the IEMA violations in the first instance and to correct the violations once they were brought to his attention. Cf. Park, 421 U.S. at 673-74, 95 S.Ct. 1903. In any event, Roseman's voluntary assumption of the role of responsible party is also sufficient. When Roseman signed IDEM's character disclosure statement, he did not cite the corporation's activities to demonstrate its capacity to operate a proposed landfill. Rather he pointed to his own individual experience as Director of a landfill for three years as fulfilling the requirement of experience of the applicant. Thus, by his own admission, he was the party responsible for the landfill's operations, and held himself out as the responsible party in obtaining the permit.