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Liability Within Corporate Groups (Bremer Vulkan) - Federal Court of Justice Attempts the Overhaul

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Peer Zumbansen

Extract

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On 17 September 2001, the Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) handed down a landmark decision regarding liability within corporate groups (“Konzernhaftung”) which is likely to give an entirely new direction to the law in this field. Most notably, the Court held that, in spite of the fact that the case concerned a by now classical example of a corporate “daughter” incurring serious financial losses due to management decisions taken by its corporate “mother”, resulting in the erosion of the daughter's financial basis, the Court exclaimed the statutory as well as judge made law regarding corporate liability within corporate groups as not applicable in this case. Thus casting somewhat aside a great and complex bulk of company law in form of a rather ambiguous and quite eruptively evolving law of corporate liability within corporate groups, the Court held that tort law and criminal law would be applicable to the case in point. Paradoxically, it is the Court's apparent shifting away from corporate group liability that might allow for a clearer view on the applicable company law in an area that has, for a long time, been dominated by heated debates about the Court's ambitious interpretation of the relevant norms, their reach and concrete application.

Type
Research Article
Information
German Law Journal , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , January 2002 , E2
Copyright
Copyright © 2002 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

For more Information: Decision of the Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof – BGH) of 17 September 2001 – Reg. No. II ZR 178/99; published in: NEUE JURISTISCHE WOCHENSCHRIFT 2001, 3 December 2001, p. 3622. Also published in: ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR INSOLVENZPRAXIS (ZIP) 2001, p. 1874; BETRIEBS BERATER (BB) 2001, p. 2233; ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR WERTPAPIERMITTEILUNGEN (WM) 2001, 2062.Google Scholar

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(10) 122 BGHZ 123.Google Scholar

(11) See 115 BGHZ 187, 194.Google Scholar

(12) See Friedrich, supra note 1, at 188.Google Scholar

(13) BGH, Decision of 17 September 2001, NEUE JURISTISCHE WOCHENSCHRIFT 2001, p. 3622.Google Scholar

(14) 122 BGHZ 123; see Schmidt, supra note 2, at 3577: “Balsam on the wounds of Limited Liability practice”.Google Scholar

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(17) Id., at 2436.Google Scholar

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