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61
No cenário nacional, mesmo contando com a positivação da teoria
da desconsideração da personalidade jurídica na cláusula geral do art. 50
da Codificação Civil, esta fase de insegurança não foi integralmente venci-
da com a positivação da teoria da desconsideração, pois, como será ana-
lisado a seguir, passamos a ter no direito positivo nacional uma série de
previsões sobre o tema, mas que não guardam perfeita sintonia entre si.
3. A origem anglo-saxã da teoria da
piercing the
corporate veil
A formulação da teoria da desconsideração da personalidade jurí-
dica teve início no ventre da jurisprudência da
common law
, em decisões
que datam do século XIX, quando ficou conhecida como
disregard doctri-
ne, piercing the corporate veil
4
, lifting the corporate veil
ou
cracking open
the corporate shell
.
Há clássica controvérsia doutrinária sobre o verdadeiro
leading
case
pioneiro no tema, polarizando-se entre o caso
Bank of Unied States
v. Deveaux
, julgado em 1807, no sistema norte-americano, e o caso
Salo-
mon v. Salomon Co. Ltd.,
do direito inglês, datado de 1897.
shareholder); (2) diversion of the corporation’s funds or assets to noncorporate uses (to the personal uses of the
corporation’s shareholders); (3) failure to maintain the corporate formalities necessary for the issuance or subscrip-
tion to the corporation’s stock, such as formal approval of the stock issue by an independent board of directors; (4) an
individual shareholder representing to persons outside the corporation that he or she is personally liable for the de-
bts or other obligations of the corporation; (5) failure to maintain corporate minutes or adequate corporate records;
(6) identical equitable ownership in two entities (Corporation A is owned by the same shareholders and in the same
proportions as Corporation B); (7) identity of the directors and officers of two entities who are responsible for super-
vision and management (a partnership or sole proprietorship and a corporation owned and managed by the same
parties); (8) failure to adequately capitalize a corporation for the reasonable risks of the corporate undertaking; (9)
absence of separately held corporate assets; (10) use of a corporation as a mere shell or conduit to operate a single
venture or some particular aspect of the business of an individual or another corporation;(11) sole ownership of all
the stock by one individual or members of a single family; (12) use of the same office or business location by the Cor-
poration and its individual shareholder(s); (13) employment of the same employees or attorney by the corporation
and its shareholder(s); (14) concealment or misrepresentation of the identity of the ownership, management, or
financial interests in the corporation, and concealment of personal business activities of the shareholders (sole sha-
reholders do not reveal the association with a corporation, which makes loans to them without adequate security);
(15) disregard of legal formalities and failure to maintain proper arm’s length relationships among related entities;
(16) use of a corporate entity as a conduit to procure labor, services, or merchandise for another person or entity; (17)
diversion of corporate assets from the corporation by or to a stockholder or other person or entity to the detriment
of creditors, or the manipulation of assets and liabilities between entities to concentrate the assets in one and the
liabilities in another; (18) contracting by the corporation with another person with the intent to avoid the risk of
nonperformance by use of the corporate entity, or the use of a corporation as a subterfuge for illegal transactions;
(19) the formation and use of the corporation to assume the existing liabilities of another person or entity.
4 O pioneirismo na utilização da expressão
piercing the corporate veil
é atribuído a I. Maurice Wormser, que a
utilizou em estudo publicado na
Columbia Law Review
, em 1912 ("
Piercing the veil of the corporate entity"
). Pos-
teriormente, em 1927, o jurista publicou a clássica obra
Disregard of the corporate fiction and allied corporation
problems,
que conta com edição fac-símile, publicada em 2000, pela editora Beardbooks.