A radio station operator demanded that a shareholder of an advertising company personally bear the debt accumulated by the company for advertising services provided to it.
The Court rejected the claim against the shareholder and held that the extreme conditions justifying the piercing of the corporate veil were not proven. Piercing the corporate veil is an extreme remedy reserved for cases where the legal entity is used to defraud a person, prejudice a creditor, or take an unreasonable risk regarding solvency. The general rule is the separation between the company's assets and those of its owners, and any deviation requires positive proof of fraudulent acts or abuse of the corporate veil. A company monetary debt, in and of itself, does not constitute grounds for imposing personal liability on its organs. In this case, the shareholder did not actively manage the company and was not personally involved in the engagement, which was handled by another director. Consequently, the shareholder did not use the separate legal entity to defraud and did not take an unreasonable risk on behalf of the company. Therefore, there are no grounds to deviate from the principle of separate legal personality and the claim was rejected.