The Delaware Court of Chancery has dismissed a claim in a breach of contract suit for piercing the corporate veil, ruling that equity requires a manipulation of the corporate form in order to justify such claims.

Anne L. Doberstein, a Wilmington homeowner living abroad, had sought to hold David Greenplate Sr., the president of general contracting company G-P Industries Inc., personally responsible for misrepresenting the dire financial state of his company. Though G-P accepted almost full payment for remodeling work, it repeatedly delayed construction and went out of business before the project even neared completion.

But in Doberstein v. G-P Industries, Vice Chancellor Donald F. Parsons Jr. found the plaintiff failed to state the claim under the reasonable conceivability standard of review that the corporation had created a “sham entity designed to defraud investors and creditors.”