LLC Manager Is Personally Liable for LLC's Failure to Pay State Agency, Without Piercing the Veil
The sole manager of a Michigan limited liability company has been held potentially liable for the LLC’s failure to pay assessments due under the Michigan Agricultural Commodities Marketing Act (ACMA). Dep’t of Agric. v. Appletree Mktg., L.L.C., No. 137552, 2010 WL 841173 (Mich. Mar. 10, 2010). The case illustrates that an LLC’s liability shield is not absolute – an LLC manager can be personally liable for some types of nonpayment by the LLC.
The ACMA established the Michigan Apple Committee to carry out marketing programs funded by assessments on apple distributors. Distributors are required to deduct a portion of the purchase prices they pay to apple producers, and to hold the funds in trust and remit them to the Committee. Mich. Comp. Laws § 290.651 et seq.
Appletree Marketing, L.L.C. withheld the required amounts from its payments to apple producers in 2004 and 2005, but failed to remit those amounts to the state. The LLC instead used the funds to pay other debts, and later became insolvent and defunct. The state sued the LLC and Steven Kropf, the LLC’s manager, to recover the unpaid assessments.
The trial court entered judgment against the LLC for the unpaid amounts, but dismissed the state’s claim against Kropf on grounds that the state’s ACMA remedy against the LLC was exclusive. Michigan’s Supreme Court reversed, holding that the ACMA explicitly preserved all other lawful remedies, including claims for common law conversion and statutory conversion. The court then examined the issue of Kropf’s potential personal liability.
Under the ACWA, the funds withheld by the LLC were held intrust for the Committee. When the LLC used those funds for other purposes, it asserted dominion and control over the Committee’s money and therefore committed the tort of conversion.
To decide whether the state could pursue claims for common law and statutory conversion against Kropf, the court looked to existing Michigan law:
Michigan law has long provided that corporate officials may be held personally liable for their individual tortious acts done in the course of business, regardless of whether they were acting for their personal benefit or the corporation’s benefit.
Appletree, 2010 WL 841173, at *7. Corporate officers may be held individually liable when they cause the corporation to act unlawfully. Id.
Kropf participated in the tort by causing the LLC to divert the Committee’s funds to other purposes. Although the prior case law involved officers of corporations, the court applied those cases to the LLC’s manager without discussion, apparently by analogy.
The court made clear that this was not a case of piercing the veil of the LLC. “However, we have never required that a plaintiff pierce the corporate veil in order to hold corporate officials liable for their own tortious misconduct, and thus it is unnecessary to pierce the corporate veil in this case.” Id.
The court concluded that Kropf could be personally liable if the facts established the necessary participation: “There is no question that, if the facts prove either common law or statutory conversion, Kropf can be held personally liable and may not hide behind the corporate form in order to prevent liability for his active participation in the tort.” Id. Because the claim against Kropf had been dismissed on summary judgment, the court remanded the claim against Kropf back to the trial court for further proceedings.
Business people use limited liability companies to shield themselves from personal liability for the companies’ debts and obligations. But the shield is not impenetrable, as Appletree shows.
Normally an LLC manager is not personally liable merely because the manager caused the LLC to breach a contract; breach of contract is not a tort. The contract, however, can establish a relationship where the conduct constituting breach of contract also constitutes a tort.
Assume the parties agree that an LLC will receive property and hold it in trust, or hold it as a bailee. If the LLC misappropriates the property and refuses to return it to the other party, it has probably committed the tort of conversion. Then, the LLC manager who caused the LLC to convert the property will be personally liable for the tort.
Tort remedies can sting. For example, under Michigan’s conversion statute, a person damaged because of another’s theft, embezzlement or conversion may recover three times the amount of actual damages plus costs and reasonable attorneys’ fees. Mich. Comp. Laws § 600.2919a.
Appletree involved an intentional tort by the LLC, but claims against managers can also occur in negligence cases. Sometimes injured parties claim that an LLC manager’s inadequate supervision and management resulted in the company’s negligent injury to the plaintiff. The law is less clear here, although in many of these cases courts do hold managers liable for acts and omissions related to supervision and management. But that’s a discussion for another day.
