| Adams v Cape Industries plc | |
|---|---|
| Court | Court of Appeal |
| Citation(s) | [1990] Ch 433 |
| Keywords | |
| Separate legal personality, limited liability | |
Adams v Cape Industries plc [1990] Ch 433 is the leading UK company law case on separate legal personality and limited liability of shareholders. The case also addressed long-standing issues under the English conflict of laws as to when a company would be resident in a foreign jurisdiction such that the English courts would recognise the foreign court's jurisdiction over the company.
Contents |
Cape Industries plc was a UK company, head of a group. Its subsidiaries mined asbestos in South Africa. They shipped it to Texas, where a marketing subsidiary, NAAC, supplied the asbestos to another company in Texas. The employees of that Texas company, NAAC, became ill, with asbestosis. They sued Cape and its subsidiaries in a New York Court. Cape was joined, who argued there was no jurisdiction to hear the case. Judgment was still entered against Cape for breach of a duty of care in negligence to the employees. The tort victims tried to enforce the judgment in the UK courts. The requirement, under conflict of laws rules, was either that Cape had consented to be subject to New York jurisdiction (which was clearly not the case) or that it was present in the US. So the question was whether, through the Texas subsidiary, NAAC, Cape Industries plc was ‘present’. For that purpose the claimants had to show in the UK Court of Appeal that the veil of incorporation could be lifted and the two companies be treated as one.
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.
| “ | Whether or not this is desirable, the right to use a corporate structure in this manner is inherent in our corporate law. ... in our judgement Cape was in law entitled to organise the group's affairs in that manner... | ” |
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:
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.
Although subsequent to the decision (which has been followed), English law has suggested a court can only lift the corporate veil when (1) construing a statute, contract or other document; (2) if a company is a "mere façade" concealing the true facts, or (3) when a subsidiary company was acting as an authorised agent of its parent, and apparently not so just because "justice requires" or to treat a group of companies as a single economic unit, in the case of tort victims, the House of Lords suggested a remedy would in fact be available. In Lubbe v Cape plc[1] Lord Bingham held that the question of proving a duty of care being owed between a parent company and the tort victims of a subsidiary would be answered merely according to standard principles of negligence law: generally whether harm was reasonably foreseeable.