Cite as: 529 U. S. 460 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
OCP's corporate veil, see id., at 1349, n. 6, and Adams, for its part, has disavowed reliance on a veil-piercing theory, see Record, Doc. No. 129, at 3 (stating, before the District Court, that "Adams does not request that the Court 'disregard the corporate form' "); Tape of Oral Arg. in No. 98-1448 (CA Fed. Feb. 3, 1999) (expressly stating that this case does not concern piercing the corporate veil). One-person corporations are authorized by law and should not lightly be labeled sham. See, e. g., Gregory v. Helvering, 293 U. S. 465, 469 (1935) (finding corporation a sham not because it was owned entirely by one person, but because it had "no business or corporate purpose"); Kirno Hill Corp. v. Holt, 618 F. 2d 982, 985 (CA2 1980) (a corporation's veil may not be pierced merely because it has only one owner). Indeed, where patents are concerned, the one-person corporation may be an altogether appropriate means to permit innovation without exposing inventors to possibly ruinous consequences. The legitimacy of OCP as a corporation, in short, is not at issue in this case.
Instead, the Federal Circuit reasoned that nothing much turned on whether the party opposing Adams' claim for costs and fees was OCP or Nelson. "[N]o basis has been advanced," the panel majority concluded, "to believe anything different or additional would have been done to defend against the allegation of inequitable conduct had Nelson individually already been added as a party or had he been a party from the outset." 175 F. 3d, at 1351. We neither dispute nor endorse the substance of this speculation. We say instead that judicial predictions about the outcome of hypothesized litigation cannot substitute for the actual opportunity to defend that due process affords every party against whom a claim is stated. As Judge Newman wrote in dissent: "The law, at its most fundamental, does not render judgment simply because a person might have been found liable had he been charged." Id., at 1354.
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