Recent Developments in Kansas Regarding Ascending Liability

The Kansas Supreme Court ruled that a parent corporation was not liable for injuries suffered by an employee of a subsidiary corporation, since the two entities were not sufficiently interrelated. The court listed 10 factors to be considered in deciding whether a subsidiary corporation is an "instrumentality" of a parent corporation (making the parent liable for the obligations and activities of the subsidiary). These 10 factors were essentially the same as the 12 factors mentioned in the previous case. The court also stressed that liability ordinarily will be imposed on a parent for a subsidiary's liabilities only if the separate incorporation of the subsidiary was done to "permit one of the corporations to evade its just obligations; to promote fraud, illegality, or injustice; or to defend crime." However, "the mere fact that a subsidiary corporation was organized for the avowed purpose ...