60
Opinion of the Court
upon whether the degree to which it controls its subsidiary and the extent and manner of its involvement with the facility, amount to the abuse of the corporate form that will warrant piercing the corporate veil and disregarding the separate corporate entities of the parent and subsidiary." Id., at 580.
Applying Michigan veil-piercing law, the Court of Appeals decided that neither CPC nor Aerojet 7 was liable for controlling the actions of its subsidiaries, since the parent and subsidiary corporations maintained separate personalities and the parents did not utilize the subsidiary corporate form to perpetrate fraud or subvert justice.
We granted certiorari, 522 U. S. 1024 (1997), to resolve a conflict among the Circuits over the extent to which parent corporations may be held liable under CERCLA for operating facilities ostensibly under the control of their subsidiaries.8 We now vacate and remand.
7 Unlike CPC, Aerojet does not base its defense in this Court on a claim that, absent unusual circumstances, a parent company can be held liable as an operator of a facility only by piercing the corporate veil. Rather, Aerojet denies liability by claiming that (1) neither it nor its subsidiaries disposed of hazardous substances during their operation of the facility, see Brief for Respondents Aerojet-General Corp. et al. 27-36, and (2) it is entitled to a third-party defense under § 107(b)(3) of CERCLA, 42 U. S. C. § 9607(b)(3), see Brief for Respondents Aerojet-General Corp. et al. 38-46. The Court of Appeals expressed some measure of agreement with Aerojet on these points and instructed the District Court to consider them on remand. See 113 F. 3d, at 577, 583. These issues are not before this Court.
8 Compare United States v. Cordova/Michigan, 113 F. 3d 572, 580 (CA6 1997) (case below) (parent may be held liable for controlling affairs of subsidiary only when the corporate veil can be pierced), and Joslyn Mfg. Co. v. T. L. James & Co., 893 F. 2d 80, 82-83 (CA5 1990) (same), cert. denied, 498 U. S. 1108 (1991) (but cf. Riverside Market Dev. Corp. v. International Bldg. Prods., Inc., 931 F. 2d 327, 330 (CA5) (parent companies that actually participate in the wrongful conduct cannot hide behind the corporate veil, and can be held directly liable without veil piercing), cert. denied, 502 U. S. 1004 (1991)), with United States v. Kayser-Roth Corp., 910 F. 2d 24, 27
Page: Index Previous 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007