Is an LLC with no assets effectively impervious to lawsuits? For example, a millionaire forms an LLC to sell lemonade on the sidewalk and they put a job posting in the local newspaper where they specified that only a person of a particular ethnicity, marital status, and gender would be hired. He then rejected applicants accordingly. The LLC has only a few planks of wood and a bag of lemons as its assets. Is there anything that anyone could do legally to this millionaire?
The corporate veil can be pierced if the millionaire failed to sink in sufficient assets for the business to meet reasonably expected liabilities. In particular, the millionaire should have funded the LLC sufficient to hire qualified people and secure business liability insurance. Further, anytime a corporate structure is set up specifically to be a liability shield and not with other reasonable reasons, it will generally be vacated by the courts. See Asset Protection by Atkisson &amp; Riser, a must-read in this field. I know you are trying to create a &quot;straw man&quot; example for simplicity, but unfortunately the character and obvious purpose of the LLC does have a bearing on its survivability. Hardly anyone creates an LLC for a lemonade stand, which begs the question of &quot;why do it&quot;. It may be a defense against discrimination if the job listing was so particularly specific that the millionaire's child or ward was the only possible candidate, and then it could be defended as an educational exercise to show the ward how businesses are set up. Rather than an attempt to discriminate in any disallowed way.
&quot;Could Maine pass a law making New Mexico corporations and LLCs legally nonexistent in Maine (and removing the corporate veil in cases where Maine courts have jurisdiction)?&quot; No. The full faith and credit clause of the U.S. Constitution, and the dormant commerce clause doctrine of U.S. Constitutional law would both invalidate a Maine law to that effect. One might think that the privileges and immunities clause of Article IV, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution (as opposed to the privileges and immunities clause of the 14th Amendment) might also invalidate this law (e.g., it also prohibits residents of another state from obtaining occupational licenses in a state). But, this is not the case, because the U.S. Supreme Court held in Paul v. Virginia, 75 U.S. 168, 180 (1868), that corporations are not protected by the privileges and immunities clause. See generally, here. This doesn't mean that Maine couldn't regulate foreign corporations in some manner that doesn't unduly discriminate against out of state corporations. For example, most states require out of state corporations that do business in that state to pay a small fee and make a simple filing with the Secretary of State of that state authorizing them to do business in that state as a precondition to filing lawsuits or counterclaims seeking relief in their state's courts. But, this is far from a denial of the very existence of the out of state corporation and doesn't, for example, prohibit the out of state corporation from defending itself against suits brought against it in that state's courts. Likewise, it does not prohibit an out of state corporation from owning property or from affording limited liability protections to its owners.
This overstates the case. A company must pursue infringements, arguably even when it isn't economically sensible in isolation to do so, to prevent its trademark from being diluted. But, that isn't the case &quot;when it's blatantly obvious that there is no infringement.&quot; There is no benefit from pursuing cases that aren't even colorable infringements. The notion is similar to adverse possession. If you let someone openly use your real property without your permission, eventually, the squatter becomes its legal owner. Also, as in the case of adverse possession, an alternative to suing someone for infringing is to make their permission non-infringing by writing them a letter expressly authorizing them to use your mark. Permissive, licensed use does not dilute a trademark.
Most criminals aren't rich... Suing someone who has nothing, won't get you anything... Sure they can be held liable for millions of dollars. But that doesn't make the money magically appear. A million dollars from someone who has no money and a dollar will get you a soda. TLDR: Suing the perpetrator of a crime is a waste of time/money if they don't have any.
Its just free enterprise, right? Well ... except when there is a law that says its not allowed. I am unfamiliar with Indian law but the relevant law in Australia is the Trade Practices Act which deals with this under the category of Misuse of Market Power. In a nutshell: A business with a substantial degree of power in a market is not allowed to use this power for the purpose of eliminating or substantially damaging a competitor or to prevent a business from entering into a market. By preferring their products over a competitor's in their search engine they are "... eliminating or substantially damaging a competitor ...".
When a company stops existing for whatever reason, then its assets (physical, financial, intellectual or otherwise) don't stop existing. When the company dissolves voluntarily, those assets usually go to the owner(s) of the company. When the company got bought up and integrated into another company, the buying company will usually own them. When the company went bankrupt and got liquidated, then they will often get sold off to the highest bidder. And then there is the question of who actually owns the IP rights to a specific game asset. Often there is not just one legal person which worked on a game. In addition to the developer, there might also have been a separate publisher who might or might not own IP rights. There might have been investors in the background who financed the project and now own some copyrights. Sometimes there was more than one publisher. And sub-contractors might have been involved in the development who only licensed their assets but retained copyright. So unfortunately it is often not really clear what happened to IP assets of a defunct company. People who might have the rights will often not care much about them until something happens which gives new commercial value to those assets. So even if you are unable to determine who owns the assets to a game, as soon as you start using them, someone might show up with a plausible claim to the IP rights and demand money from you. Such lawsuits can get really messy and really expensive. For a good example for just how much of a goose chase you might be in for when you want to legally obtain the rights to a game from a defunct company, check out the story of the re-release of No One Lives Forever. tl;dr: multiple game companies said "Maybe we have the rights to the game according to some contract buried in some file cabinet, but we don't care enough to find out. But if you try to release it, we will find out and if we do we will sue you!"
You can hire someone to locate the defendant with the information that you have, or you can apply to a court for permission to serve them with process via &quot;substituted service&quot; because their physical address can't be determined. But, in general, better business practice is to not enter into contracts with people with whom you have more than a name that might be false, and an email address, unless you have some means of non-judicial enforcement of your agreement (like the practical ability to shut down access to an internet subscription). If you don't even know if someone's name is real and have done nothing to confirm that then you also have no assurances that they have any assets from which you could collect if you won a breach of contract lawsuit. If you deal with large numbers of people in low value contracts, it may be worth treating the fact that some contracts are effectively unenforceable as a cost of doing business. But, if a contract is important, it was foolish from a business perspective to rely on a contract on that basis alone, even if it is legal to do so.
Very briefly in terms of contract law, by hiring this person to haul away your trash, you're entering into a contract with him/her for the disposal of the trash. The fact that he says he has a legal place to dispose of the trash is part of your contract. That fact - either verbal (or in writing) in that contract - should really absolve you of any responsibility of what happens to the trash. You don't need to actually know all the details of his legal dumping place, but you can hold him/her to the agreement if it happens that they do illegally dispose of the property they have been hired to remove. In reality, this person is advertising this service as a business (on Facebook) and has been operating for some time, so they are probably legally disposing of refuse in a landfill while making some money from whatever might be valuable. The trash hauler probably depends on some of your trash being valuable, in terms of recycling or repairing or selling collectables ("old toys"), and not all of that will be disposed of in a landfill. I suppose it's possible a municipality could accuse you of illegally disposing of the trash if it was somehow tracked back to you, i.e. personally identifiable items or papers in the trash that was found illegally dumped. But you have the contract with the trash hauler to show you acted in good faith. Ask in the Facebook group if indeed this person disposes of trash in a legal manner, or ask others who have hired him/her. Clearly outline your stipulations for legal disposal with them. You can even ask to see their business license from the city/county.