The Corporate Veil

Definition:

A legal concept that separates the personality of a corporation from the personalities of its shareholders, and protects them from being personally liable for the company's debts and other obligations. This protection is not ironclad or impenetrable. Where a court determines that a company's business was not conducted in accordance with the provisions of corporate legislation (or that it was just a façade for illegal activities) it may hold the shareholders personally liable for the company's obligations under the legal concept of lifting the corporate veil.

In a terrific piece from Mother Jones, the Hobby Lobby decision is deemed Pyrrhic without question.

That separation is what legal and business scholars call the "corporate veil," and it's fundamental to the entire operation. Now, thanks to the Hobby Lobby case, it's in question. By letting Hobby Lobby's owners assert their personal religious rights over an entire corporation, the Supreme Court has poked a major hole in the veil. In other words, if a company is not truly separate from its owners, the owners could be made responsible for its debts and other burdens.

And so a corporation is a person eh? Seems Blowback applies in this case, don't you think?

"And so it goes." - K. Vonnegut