Piercing the Veil in UK Law

Leading Cases
  • Prest v Petrodel Resources Ltd
    • Supreme Court
    • 12 Junio 2013

    In my view, the principle that the court may be justified in piercing the corporate veil if a company's separate legal personality is being abused for the purpose of some relevant wrongdoing is well established in the authorities. This is because I think that the recognition of a limited power to pierce the corporate veil in carefully defined circumstances is necessary if the law is not to be disarmed in the face of abuse.

    It is that the court may disregard the corporate veil if there is a legal right against the person in control of it which exists independently of the company's involvement, and a company is interposed so that the separate legal personality of the company will defeat the right or frustrate its enforcement.

    I conclude that there is a limited principle of English law which applies when a person is under an existing legal obligation or liability or subject to an existing legal restriction which he deliberately evades or whose enforcement he deliberately frustrates by interposing a company under his control.

  • VTB Capital Plc v Nutritek International Corporation
    • Court of Appeal (Civil Division)
    • 20 Junio 2012

    First, ownership and control of a company are not of themselves sufficient to justify piercing the veil. Third, the corporate veil can only be pierced when there is some impropriety. Fifth, it follows that if the court is to pierce the veil, it is necessary to show both control of the company by the wrongdoer and impropriety in the sense of a misuse of the company as a device or façade to conceal wrongdoing.

    The relevant wrongdoing must be in the nature of an independent wrong that involves the fraudulent or dishonest misuse of the corporate personality of the company for the purpose of concealing the true facts.

  • Gillian Christine Hope (aka Lewis, formerly Krejci) (Applicant) Libor Stanislav Karol Krejci (First Respondent) Trustees of the Krejci Family Trust (Second Respondents) Damsonetti Holdings Ltd (Third Respondent)
    • Family Division
    • 29 Junio 2012

    I can easily see why these principles are critically necessary where the objective is that which was sought in the VTB case, namely to deem someone to be a party to a contract to which he plainly is not. But I have great difficulty in seeing why they must be satisfied for the form of piercing of the veil that is the telescoping order, which is almost invariably the situation confronted in financial remedy proceedings.

  • Antonio Gramsci Shipping Corporation v Stepanovs
    • Queen's Bench Division (Commercial Court)
    • 25 Febrero 2011

    None of the reasons which Warren J put forward argues against a conclusion, depending on how the facts fall out at trial, that in this case the puppeteer should be held party to the puppet company's contract. There is in my judgment no good reason of principle or jurisprudence why the victim cannot enforce the agreement against both the puppet company and the puppet who, all the time, was pulling the strings.

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Legislation
  • Manchester Good Government and Police Act 1844
    • UK Non-devolved
    • 1 de Enero de 1844
    ... ... sucli Thing to f'all into any &\vel-, Pipe, or Drain, or into any \Veil, Streani, or Watercourse, Pound or Reservoir fbr \Vater, or cause or ... And bc it enacted, That. every Person who shall bore, Piercing pierce, break, ciit open, or otherwise injure any Cask, Box, or Pack- ... ...
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Books & Journal Articles
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