Why a Parent Company Can't Sue on Behalf of its Subsidiary Under NY Law
As a New York court recently noted, if the law were different, the following general rule would be eviscerated:
"[C]orporations have an existence separate and distinct from that of their shareholders, and an individual shareholder cannot secure a personal recovery for an alleged wrong done to a corporation. The fact that an individual closely affiliated with a corporation (for example, a principal shareholder, or even a sole shareholder), is incidentally injured by an injury to the corporation does not confer on the injured individual standing to sue on the basis of either that indirect injury or the direct injury to the corporation."
If you plan to sue on behalf of a corporation, make sure you are suing in the correct corporation's name; otherwise you claim is susceptible to being dismissed.