[munk-a]

They absolutely are and a good lawyer, I'm sure, could audit the accounts and find some misdeeds - the issue is that the auditing and even getting access to those records in court is extremely expensive. To my knowledge there isn't a way to trigger that kind of a discovery in small claims so you need to go through the pricey legal system.

The money in question here is the proceeds from selling a collection valued at 200k - the recovery (unless you start to get into punitive territory) is likely to be rather meager... and it's a large risk so there may be few bites on firms willing to take it on purely commission.

[swiftcoder]

> unless you start to get into punitive territory

Is there not potential grounds here for punitive damages? The false police reports and harassment seem egregious even by corporate standards.

And the corporation is valued at $400 million, so it's not like the pot isn't sweet enough

[benmmurphy]

In the UK you can make an order of information to compel directors of a company that is in debt to answer questions about company assets, accounts and records under oath. This can be done in County Court and my understanding it is inexpensive. I'm not sure how useful this is for carrying out an audit because I think its meant to be used for seeing if the debtor has the ability to pay. I think generally incorrect trading during an insolvency is meant to be discovered by the receivers during the insolvency process. Also, I'm not sure if there is an equivalent to an order of information in the US system.

[gamblor956]

the issue is that the auditing and even getting access to those records in court is extremely expensive.

In most cases, the bankruptcy trustee will be doing that work already.

But in a case like this, it's probably not going to be necessary. Courts usually pierce the corporate veil in situations involving the debts of wholly-owned subsidiaries. It happens frequently enough that its actually news when they don't pierce the veil. This is because corporations usually do a bad job of doing all the things that are necessary to maintain the liability shield in court.

In a nutshell: it requires treating the subsidiary as an entirely separate entity, with separate books, accounts, back office, officers/management, etc. As this is extremely inefficient, most corporations don't bother. The only corporations that do are the ones that deal with company-killing litigation regularly enough that it's worth it to absorb the cost of maintaining the liability shield.