The English Judicial Trends in Lifting the Corporate Veil

Abstract

The “separate legal personality” and “limited liability” are two main and fundamental principles of corporate law. The concept of a separate legal personality of the company originated from the case Salomon v Salomon & Co Ltd. The landmark case decided that when a company is registered, it attains a separate legal identity. A corporate veil is a concept that recognizes the separate corporate personality of the company from the shareholders‟ personalities. In many circumstances, it happens that the corporate personality of the company commits fraud or any other illegal acts. It becomes impossible to believe that an artificial personality like a company commits any illegal act or fraud. In such cases, for the identification of the original wrongdoer, the veil of the corporation is pierced which is also called lifting the corporate veil. To highlight the English Courts’ trends in lifting the corporate veil, this article unearths the canons of English courts’ judgments to pinpoint the inconsistencies in their decisions. The paper inspects the exceptions to the Saloman rule that have been focused on and meticulously analysed in this research paper to highlight the evolution of these recognised exceptions including “Single Economic Entity, Fraud, and Facade, Sake of justice, and Agency.”