> I'm definitely not trying to be argumentative, but as I understand it, corporate limited liability doesn't shield individuals (including agents of the company) from tort liability.
That's not about piercing the veil (which protects shareholders from liabilities incurred by the company), that's just individual liability independent of the corporate existence of corporate liability. And your right, but negligence liability requires that the individual agent owes you a duty of care and failed it; even in the case where corporate negligence toward a harmed party is easy to establish, individual negligence of a particular corporate agent toward the same party may be much harder to establish. And, again, such liability is a completely different issue then the corporate veil.
> Also, it's not really true that anything that produces civil liability is a tort, is it? Civil liability also arises from contract law.
True, but I think the general point still stands that the corporate veil would be pretty flimsy to start with if it didn't generally include protection from liability arising through tort.
That's not about piercing the veil (which protects shareholders from liabilities incurred by the company), that's just individual liability independent of the corporate existence of corporate liability. And your right, but negligence liability requires that the individual agent owes you a duty of care and failed it; even in the case where corporate negligence toward a harmed party is easy to establish, individual negligence of a particular corporate agent toward the same party may be much harder to establish. And, again, such liability is a completely different issue then the corporate veil.
> Also, it's not really true that anything that produces civil liability is a tort, is it? Civil liability also arises from contract law.
True, but I think the general point still stands that the corporate veil would be pretty flimsy to start with if it didn't generally include protection from liability arising through tort.