모자회사간 법인격부인의 요건

The subject ruling is on the case where the plaintiff sued the parent company for its subsidiary's breach of the contract to which the subsidiary is the counterparty. In the subject ruling, the Supreme Court advanced from the past attitudes which just described the conditions of the veil-piercing doctrine("doctrine") being applied metaphysically, to present the conditions under which the doctrine can be applied in the parent-subsidiary context systematically and concretely. The Supreme Court ruled that if the corporate entity is to be pierced in the parent-subsidiary context, the two conditions should be satisfied, that is to say, the objective attributes and the subjective intention or purpose. Also, the Supreme Court presented the elements or lists by which the Court could conclude whether the foregoing conditions were satisfied. These elements or lists are thought to be heavily influenced by the U. S. Court precedents which have been accumulated for ages, which will be used as the tests for deciding the application of the doctrine in the future parent-subsidiary cases. However, being the leading case by the Supreme Court, the ruling does not include all the major elements or lists to be considered in the parent-subsidiary context. Though the predictability of the application of the doctrine is thought not to be relatively high, for the doctrine is, in the essence, aimed at the equity of each case, the conditions under which the doctrine is to be applied in the parent-subsidiary context will be established gradually with the accumulation of the Supreme Court cases in the future.