摘要：On 17 September 2001, the Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) handed down a landmark decision regarding liability within corporate groups (“Konzernhaftung”) which is likely to give an entirely new direction to the law in this field. Most notably, the Court held that, in spite of the fact that the case concerned a by now classical example of a corporate “daughter” incurring serious financial losses due to management decisions taken by its corporate “mother”, resulting in the erosion of the daughter's financial basis, the Court exclaimed the statutory as well as judge made law regarding corporate liability within corporate groups as not applicable in this case. Thus casting somewhat aside a great and complex bulk of company law in form of a rather ambiguous and quite eruptively evolving law of corporate liability within corporate groups, the Court held that tort law and criminal law would be applicable to the case in point. Paradoxically, it is the Court's apparent shifting away from corporate group liability that might allow for a clearer view on the applicable company law in an area that has, for a long time, been dominated by heated debates about the Court's ambitious interpretation of the relevant norms, their reach and concrete application.
