Judgment
The Court of Appeal unanimously rejected (1) that Cape should be part of a single economic unit (2) that the subsidiaries were a façade (3) any agency relationship existed on the facts. Slade LJ (for Mustill LJ and Ralph Gibson LJ) began by noting that to ‘the layman at least the distinction between the case where a company itself trades in a foreign country and the case where it trades in a foreign country through a subsidiary, whose activities it has full power to control, may seem a slender one…’ But approving Sir Godfray’s argument, ‘save in cases which turn on the wording of particular statutes or contracts, the court is not free to disregard the principle of Salomon… merely because it considers that justice so requires.’ On the test of the ‘mere façade’, it was emphasised that the motive was relevant whenever such a sham or cloak is alleged, as in Jones v Lipman. A company must be set up to avoid existing obligations, not future and hypothetical obligations which have not yet arisen. The court held that one of Cape's subsidiaries (a special purpose vehicle incorporated in Liechtenstein) was in fact a façade, but on the facts this was not a material subsidiary such as to attribute liability to Cape. Cases like Holdsworth, Scottish Coop and DHN were distinguishable on the basis of particular words on the relevant statutory provisions. It noted that DHN was doubted in Woolfson.
| “ | Mr. Morison submitted that the court will lift the corporate veil where a defendant by the device of a corporate structure attempts to evade (i) limitations imposed on his conduct by law; (ii) such rights of relief against him as third parties already possess; and (iii) such rights of relief as third parties may in the future acquire. Assuming that the first and second of these three conditions will suffice in law to justify such a course, neither of them apply in the present case. It is not suggested that the arrangements involved any actual or potential illegality or were intended to deprive anyone of their existing rights. Whether or not such a course deserves moral approval, there was nothing illegal as such in Cape arranging its affairs (whether by the use of subsidiaries or otherwise) so as to attract the minimum publicity to its involvement in the sale of Cape asbestos in the United States of America. As to condition (iii), we do not accept as a matter of law that the court is entitled to lift the corporate veil as against a defendant company which is the member of a corporate group merely because the corporate structure has been used so as to ensure that the legal liability (if any) in respect of particular future activities of the group (and correspondingly the risk of enforcement of that liability) will fall on another member of the group rather than the defendant company. Whether or not this is desirable, the right to use a corporate structure in this manner is inherent in our corporate law. Mr. Morison urged on us that the purpose of the operation was in substance that Cape would have the practical benefit of the group's asbestos trade in the United States of America without the risks of tortious liability. This may be so. However, in our judgment, Cape was in law entitled to organise the group's affairs in that manner and (save in the case of A.M.C. to which special considerations apply) to expect that the court would apply the principle of Salomon v A Salomon & Co Ltd AC 22 in the ordinary way. | ” |
The court separately had to consider whether Cape had established a presence within the United States such that the English court should recognise the jurisdiction of the United States over Cape, and enforce a U.S. judgment against it (one of the criticisms made of the decision by U.S. lawyers is that the Court of Appeal fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the Federal system in the U.S.A., but that misunderstanding does not affect the general principles laid down by the court). The Court of Appeal held that in order for a company to have a presence in the foreign jurisdiction, it must be established that:
- the company had its own fixed place of business (a branch office) in the jurisdiction from which it has carried on its own business for more than a minimal time; and
- the company's business is transacted from that fixed place of business.
On the facts the Court of Appeal held that Cape had no fixed place of business in the United States such that recognition should not be given to the U.S. judgment awarded against it.
Read more about this topic: Adams V Cape Industries Plc
Famous quotes containing the word judgment:
“I [Boswell] ... insisted that admiration was more pleasing than judgment, as love is more pleasing than friendship. The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love like being enlivened with champagne. JOHNSON. “No, Sir; admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne; judgment and friendship like being enlivened.””
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“Common sense is judgment without reflection, shared by an entire class, an entire nation, or the entire human race.”
—Giambattista Vico (1688–1744)
“No legislation can suppress nature; all life rushes to reproduction; our procreative faculties are matured early, while passion is strong, and judgment and self-restraint weak. We cannot alter this, but we can alter what is conventional. We can refuse to brand an act of nature as a crime, and to impute to vice what is due to ignorance.”
—Tennessee Claflin (1846–1923)