beta
Text
1. The plaintiff's claim is dismissed.
2. The costs of lawsuit shall be borne by the Plaintiff.
Reasons
1. From March 2014 to July 2014, the Plaintiff asserted that: (a) supplied goods equivalent to KRW 76,623,932 to C Co., Ltd. (hereinafter “instant company”); and (b) paid only KRW 38,00,000 to KRW 38,623,932, the Plaintiff’s outstanding claims remain.
The Defendant is the de facto manager of the instant company, and there is no employee of the instant company, and the Defendant retired from the representative director of the instant company on June 2017, and thereafter D, the Defendant’s spouse, was appointed as the inside director. As such, denying the Defendant’s liability on the ground that the Defendant is separate from the instant company is against the principle of trust and good faith or is not allowed as it abused the legal personality.
Therefore, the defendant should pay to the plaintiff the above KRW 38,623,932 and damages for delay.
2. Determination
A. In a case where a company maintains the external form of a juristic person, but it merely takes the form of a juristic person, and in substance, it is merely a private enterprise of another person behind the corporate personality, or it is used without permission for the purpose of avoiding the application of the laws against the person behind the corporate personality, the denial of the responsibility of the person behind the corporate personality by asserting that even if the act of the company is an act of the company, it shall belong only to the company on the ground that it is a separate person, and thus, it shall not be permitted against the justice and equity as an abuse of the corporate personality in violation of the principle of trust and good faith. Therefore, the company as well as the person behind the corporate personality shall be held liable for the act of the company.
(See Supreme Court Decision 97Da21604 delivered on January 19, 2001). If the company appears to be merely an individual enterprise of another person behind the corporate personality, as a matter of principle, property and business between the company and its hinterland is based on the time when the juristic act or factual act in question is performed.