California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from Evans v. El Dorado Improvement Co., 119 Cal.Rptr. 889, 46 Cal.App.3d 84 (Cal. App. 1975):
'It must be shown that the corporation is dominated or controlled by the individual or other corporation, but it is not enough merely to show a 'one-man' or 'two-man' corporation, or ownership of a subsidiary by the parent. The general rule requires a further showing that failure to disregard the entity would sanction a fraud or promote injustice. These limitations are stated in Minifie v. Rowley (1921) 187 C. 481, 487, 202 P. 673, as follows: 'Before the acts and obligations of a corporation can be legally recognized as those of a particular person, and vice versa, the following combination of circumstances must be made to appear: First, that the corporation is not only influenced and governed by that person, but that there is such a unity of interest and ownership that the individuality, or separateness, of the said person and corporation has ceased; second, that the facts are such that an adherence to the fiction of the separate existence of the corporation would, under the particular circumstances, sanction a fraud or promote injustice.''
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